Comparative and Cross-Cultural Validity of the Moral Actions Questionnaire, a Measure for Ethical Virtue

• Main Author: Iurino, Kathryn
• Other Authors: Saucier, Gerard
• Language: en_US
• Published: University of Oregon 2018
• Subjects: Assessment; Cross-cultural research; Ethical virtue; Moral traits; Psychometrics; Scale validation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1794/23911

Though current personality models provide a starting point for measuring ethical virtues, ethical content may not be fully captured in existing personality inventories due in part to the systematic elimination of morally-relevant trait-adjectives in early lexical studies. Further, personality dimensions relevant to measuring the ethical domain include both ethical and non-ethical content. The Moral Actions Questionnaire was designed to assess seven conceptually-distinct ethical virtues that are emphasized across cultures and philosophies. This dissertation investigates the performance of the Moral Actions Questionnaire, relative to other candidate models of ethical virtue from personality inventories. Psychometric quality, structural validity, and predictive validity for these models are evaluated in samples from five countries: Kenya, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. Findings suggest that the Moral Actions Questionnaire aids in prediction of altruistic bravery, guilt proneness, satisfaction with life, and meaning with life across most countries. Patterns in psychometric quality and structure across countries and methods (self- and informant-report) are discussed.