Constructing measures for the moral behavior rating of children

Pages: 53-57
Hajar Khabaz (Department of Psychology and Educational Science, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran)
Fatemeh Moradi (Department of Applied Psychology and Counselling Center University of Mumbai, Mumbai, Maharashtra)

This study is based on modelling measures for children’s moral behavior. We provided the initial items of moral behavior measures based on theoretical frameworks and questionnaires of the moral subject and scales relevant to the present scale, such as Borba’s moral intelligence questionnaire (2001); Kendall and Wilcox’s self-control assessment measure (1979); Moral components in Mofid and Kafili Moghadam’s research (2012); Lotf Abadi’s research on measuring moral development (2005); the measure of moral development for students (Manavi Poor, 2012) and providing operational definitions. The content validity of the questionnaires was evaluated by expert opinion and the items approved were 75% of them. The questionnaire implemented on a sample of 382 parents of pre-school children (4-6 years old). In order to verify the reliability of the questionnaire, we used the internal consistency method (Cronbach’s & Spearman Brown’s alpha) where Cronbach’s alpha for the whole scale was 0.90 and Spearman Brown was 0.88. For factor analysis, we used the main components method using orthogonal rotation of type VRMIX. Three main factors including empathy, self-respect and respect were identified. Totally 12.41% of the questionnaire variables predicted moral behavior. The valid factor analysis indicators of the structural equations model showed that, in general, the pattern has a suitable situation for explanation and fit. Finally, this questionnaire can be used for evaluating children’s moral behavior in order for carrying out various researches.

Keywords: measure, moral behavior, children