DIT2: Devising and testing a revised instrument of moral judgment.

Abstract

The Denning Issues Test, Version 2 (DIT2), updates dilemmas and items, shortens the original Defining Issues Test (DIT1) of moral judgment, and purges fewer participants for doubtful response reliability.DIT1 has been used for over 25 years.DIT2 makes 3 changes: in dilemmas and items, in the algorithm of indexing, and in the method of detecting unreliable participants.With all 3 changes, DIT2 is an improvement over DIT1.The validity criteria for DIT2 are (a) significant age and educational differences among 9th graders, high school graduates, college seniors, and students in graduate and professional schools; (b) prediction of views on public policy issues (e.g., abortion, religion in schools, rights of homosexuals, women's roles); (c) internal reliability; and (d) correlation with DIT1.However, the increased power of DIT2 over DIT1 is primarily due to the new methods of analysis (a new index called N2, new checks) rather than to changes in dilemmas, items, or instructions.Although DIT2 presents updated dilemmas and smoother wording in a shorter test (practical improvements), the improvements in analyses account for the validity improvements.The Defining Issues Test, Version 2 (DIT2), is a revision of the original Defining Issues Test (DIT1), which was first published in 1974.DIT2 updates the dilemmas and items, shortens the test, and has clearer instructions.This is the third in a series of articles in the Journal of Educational Psychology aimed at improving the measurement of moral judgment (Rest, Thoma, & Edwards, 1997;Rest, Thoma, Narvaez, & Bebeau, 1997).Rest, Thoma, and Edwards (1997) proposed an operational definition of construct validity (seven criteria) that could be used to evaluate various measurement devices of moral judgment.Rest, Thoma, Narvaez, et al. (1997) reported that a new way of indexing DIT data, the N2 index, had superior performance on the seven criteria in contrast to the traditional P index,