Collective moral disengagement: Initial validation of a scale for adolescents

Abstract

Collective moral disengagement refers to shared group beliefs that morally justify negative actions. This study reports an initial validation of the newly developed Classroom Collective Moral Disengagement Scale (CCMDS) for adolescents. This self-report instrument assesses the degree to which mechanisms of moral disengagement are shared by students in their class. Data were collected from two samples of 486 and 654 adolescents attending middle and high schools in Italy. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses the unidimensional structure of the scale was established. Multigroup analyses demonstrated configural, metric and scalar invariance of the model across age and gender groups. The final version of the scale consists of 17 items and it has good internal consistency and validity. It is concluded that the scale is a promising measure for research concerning group level morality.

Keywords::

• Collective moral disengagement
• Moral justifications
• Cognitive distortions
• Group norms
• Moral climate

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Elena Faleri and Laura Sergi for their invaluable help in data collection.

Notes

¹ The results are explained by the change in the χ² value (Δχ²) as an index of difference in fit. However, given that Δχ² is sensitive to sample size, Cheung and Rensvold (2002) suggested using ΔCFI, which is not prone to this problem. A ΔCFI value higher than .01 is indicative of a significant drop in fit.