SOURCES OF INFLUENCE IN MORAL THOUGHT - THE NEW MORAL AUTHORITY SCALE

Current interest in theorising about moral judgement has been dominate d by Kohlberg's (1969, 1971) cognitive developmental view. This paper will argue that Kohlberg's and Rest's purely ''formalistic'' conceptua lisations of moral judgement and associated measures may misrepresent the true nature of moral thought. Henry (1983a) and Trainer (1982) hav e identified certain logical inconsistencies in Kohlberg's reliance on the ''form'' of moral judgements, arguing for a reconceptualisation i n terms of the ''content'' of moral judgement, a much neglected yet eq ually informative alternative. In light of this, the present study att empts to operationalise Henry's content distinction with respect to Ko hlberg's stage approach. Psychometric properties of a new measure call ed the Moral Authority Scale (MAS) are reported. The MAS was administe red twice to 93 late adolescents. Findings revealed that test-retest a nd split-half reliabilities of the MAS subscales were appropriately hi gh. The convergent validity of the MAS with the Defining Issues Test ( DIT) and discriminant validity confirmed some predictions. Moreover, t he item-total correlational analysis suggests that the MAS has strong structural validity. In line with Henry's reformulation, the MAS ackno wledges that people maintain a range of views representing different t ypes of moral judgement. By measuring perceived sources of influence o n moral reasoning, the MAS has the potential to help educators and res earchers gain a better understanding of the role of social-interaction al contexts for the learning of ''what or who is important'' when maki ng moral judgements.