The construction of a normative instrument for the measurement of moral reasoning

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to construct a normative instrument for the measurement of different levels of moral reasoning. The sample comprised 426 undergraduate students in Industrial Psychology and Personnel Management from two Afrikaans speaking universities. A questionnaire was developed to measure different levels of moral reasoning on a normative scale. A factor analysis on 90 items yielded two factors. These factors were interpreted as principled moral reasoning and prescriptive moral reasoning. The two scales were subjected to an item analysis and yielded reliability coefficients of 0,936 and 0,937. The implications of these findings are discussed