What does the DIT measure?

Emler, Palmer-Canton & St. James (1998) suggest that scores on the Defining Issues Test (DIT) of moral judgment development are in large measure a ref lection of participants' political identities. Although we agree that polit ical reasoning and moral judgments overlap, we do take issue with the claim that DIT scores and the findings they produce can be explained by politica l identity. In three sections we first outline our view of the controversy that this, and the senior author's previous paper, raise concerning the val idity of the DIT, then we note our interpretation of the current findings, and finally we draw attention to the limitations of the test manipulation m ethodology featured in this research and offer an alternative strategy to a ssess the validity of the DIT. We conclude that, although this research cle arly demonstrates that DIT scores can be manipulated by altering the partic ipant's test taking set, it provides no direct evidence on the validity of the DIT.