Validation of a Scale to Measure Development of Social Responsibility
put "band-aids" over social problems, rather than change them.
At the end of the SSLI, students responded to two
questions to assess their level of involvement in
volunteer and service-learning activities. One
item states "Please mark the following choice that
best describes your level of volunteer activity."
Students indicated one ofthe following responses:
I have never participated in a fund-raising or
volunteer activity in my life; I volunteer for fundraising or other activities from time to time; I
volunteer consistently with an agency or organization (consistently may mean on a weekly or
monthly basis, or you may help an organization
consistently with a special event, such as the
Special Olympics); My volunteer work goes beyond helping an organization: I am committed to
a specific cause, like the environment,
homelessness, illiteracy, etc., and I do what I can,
when I can, for that cause. The second item says
"Please choose the statement that best describes
your level of involvement in the Center for Service Learning." Students chose one ofthe following options: I have participated with the Center
for Service Learning both for course credit and as
a volunteer; I have participated with the Center
for Service Learning as a volunteer only; I have
participated with the Center for Service Learning
for course credit only; and I have never been
involved with the Center for Service Learning.
The items were included as grouping variables
for contrasting group studies reported later in this
article.
Scale of Intellectual Development (SID). The
SID (Erwin, 1981), based on Perry's (1970) intellectual development model, has 106 Likert-type
items with three subscales related to the intellectual developmental stages of Dualism, Relativism, and Commitment. The SID has a fourth
subscale, Empathy, which is related to Gilligan's
work; it measures the degree to which people
understand how their behavior affects others.
Erwin (1981) calls the Empathy stage the "fourth
and final stage" of intellectual development;
however, he also reports a moderate, positive
correlation between Empathy and Commitment,
indicating that they are probably not mutually
exclusive stages. Because Empathy is associated
with Gilligan's work rather than with the Perry
theory, and because the Empathy subscale is
moderately related to the Commitment subscale,
it will be assumed for the purposes of this research article that these subscales are measuring
two, somewhat independent dimensions ofhigher
levels of intellectual development.
The SID manual (Erwin, 1981) cites alpha
coefficients for the four subscales: Dualism,.81;
Relativism,.70; Commitment,.76; and Empathy,.73. It also summarizes a considerable amount
of validity evidence which includes theoretically
predicted relationships between the subscales and
class standing, high school GPA, participation in
church and club activities, and measures of identity.
Defining Issues Test (DIT). The DIT was developed by Rest (1990) as an objective measure
of moral reasoning development as defined in
Kohlberg's (1969) theory. In Kohlberg's theory,
those who function at the highest level of moral
reasoning use universal principals about human
rights and responsibility to solve moral dilemmas. The P-score is the measure of the extent to
which people use principled moral reasoning.
The long version of the DIT was used on
assessment day, which includes six moral dilemmas and 72 items. Examinees gave their resolution to each dilemma, then indicate the degree of
importance of different factors in making that
decision. Each item that measures the importance
of these factors is associated with one of the six
stages of Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Each item response is given a numerical
value (0="no importance" to 5="of great importance"). The P-score is computed by summing
their responses across the items associated with
stages 5 and 6. The P-score was the only one used
in this study because it is considered the general
assessment of principled moral reasoning of the
DIT and has the strongest psychometric qualities.
The DIT manual (Rest, 1990) reviews reliability and validity studies conducted with the DIT.
The P-score has shown both test-retest and internal consistency estimates in the.70s and.80s.
The manual also reports data indicating the Pscores have shown expected differences across
age groups and groups varying in education level.
The test also has an average correlation of.50
with other tests of moral reasoning, including
versions of Kohlberg's test.
Measure of Moral Orientation (MOM). The
MOM (Liddell, Halpin, & Halpin, 1992) measures two orientations toward moral decision
making described by Gilligan (1982). Individuals with an orientation toward caring focus on
how their moral decisions affect other people and
interpersonal relationships. Those who have an
orientation toward justice, focus on rights and
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