Luppo Kuillman

General Introduction 15 1 1.3.2 Conceptualization and operationalization of Moral Reasoning The second component of the FCM is moral reasoning, which is considered to be a cognitive developmental structure, and one of themost extensively studied constructs included within the FCM (M. J. Bebeau, 2002). Moral reasoning - interchangeably also indicated as moral judgment - can be viewed as a skill that determines the course of action to proceed towards action, once the best choice of all available alternatives has been ‘judged.’ Moral reasoning is subject to development (i.e., with the increase of age, education, the level of reasoning) as assumed by Kohlberg’s development theory (Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977). To say, a person will - from childhood through adolescence towards adulthood - advance along a stage-sequence of cognitive moral development; from respectively the pre-conventional -, via the conventional-, to the post-conventional stage. With the latter stage reflecting the focus on universal principles. The Defining Issues Test (DIT), developed by James Rest (J. Rest, Thoma, Narvaez, & Bebeau, 1997b), is one of the most used and researched indicators to measure the level of moral reasoning (King & Mayhew, 2002; J. R. Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999a; Schlaefli, Rest & Thoma, 1985). Furthermore, over the last couple of decades, the DIT has evolved towards the generally accepted gold standard to assess respondents’ level of moral reasoning and is upheld by good psychometric properties and several types of validity (J. R. Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999b), including a settled cross-cultural validity (Moon, 1985). To assess the level of moral reasoning, I, as reported in Chapter 3 of this doctoral thesis, used the Dutch short-form version of the DIT (Raaijmakers, Engels, & Van Hoof, 2005). In the DIT (short form) that I used, participants were presented with three standard scenario-based moral dilemmas, namely: “Heinz and the drug,” “The escaped prisoner,” and “The newspaper.” Each scenario was followed by eight statements that were meant to evoke the respondent’s deliberations in solving the dilemma. DIT Rating scales. For each moral dilemma, eight statements were to be answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from “very unimportant” (1) to “very important” (5) and were considered to be indicative of a specific stage in the level of moral reasoning: a) Personal interest, b) Maintaining norms, and c) Post-conventional. After rating all eight statements for each dilemma, the participant was asked to rank four statements out of eight as “most important,” “second in importance,” “third in importance,” and “fourth in importance.”