Construction of Moral Disengagement Scale for Adults: A Reliable Measure

• Published in: Pakistan journal of psychological research : PJPR 2021, Vol.36 (2), p.199-223
• Main Authors: Saif, Ayesha, Riaz, Saima
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adults; Age groups; Ethics; Morality; Population; Principal components analysis; Psychology; Teenagers; Urdu language; Validity
• ISSN: 1016-0604; 2663-208X
• DOI: 10.33824/PJPR.2021.36.2.12

The main objective of current research was development of an indigenous Moral Disengagement Scale for Adults (MDS-A) in Urdu language. The subsequent objective was the establishment of reliability of newly developed Scale. Initially an item pool of 116 items was formulated based on Bandura’s model (2002) which was reduced to 106 items and later 92 items after expert’s evaluation and item analysis, respectively. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted on 92 items scale by administering it on 579 adults (250 men and 329 women), age range of 19-83 years from villages and various educational institutes of district Gujrat, Pakistan. EFA by using Principal Component Analysis with Varimax Orthogonal Rotation resulted in six factor solution of 63 items. Later Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirmed the six-factor structure on an independent sample of 413 adults (193 men and 220 women) with age range 19-80 years from Gujrat district, Pakistan. After deletion of 43 items, CFA yielded good model fit indices for final 20 items MDS-A. MDS-A had very satisfactory Cronbach’s alpha reliability and test-retest reliability. MDS-A also demonstrated construct validity in terms of highly significant item-total correlations and subscale-to-scale total correlations. Overall, a reliable and valid scale for measurement of moral disengagement among adults in Pakistani culture is available for further indigenous research and counselling settings.