| The reliability and validity of the Moral Self Interview (MSI) was examined. This MSI was created by a team of researchers at Harvard University to investigate the moral identity of adolescents. Whereas Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview (MJI) focused on judgments of the "right" in standardized dilemmas, the MSI explores a broader range of the moral-self, including: (1) salience of moral-self-as-object, and (2) the moral-self-as-subject's constructions of self-rule, the good self, and responsible action.;Salience of the moral-self-as-object was analyzed by a content coding of self-description responses along a philosophically defined continuum of physical, social/psychological and moral referents. The other mode of analysis was stage-structural, employing Kegan's Subject-Object methodology (Kegan, 1982; Lahey, Souvaine, Kegan, Felix, & Goodman, 1988), a form of neo-Piagetian structural evaluation.;The literature review examines philosophic issues: defining the moral domain, conceptualizing the moral self, and differentiating content and form. Also reviewed are technical considerations for evaluating the adequacy of the reliability and validity of a research interview.;The MSI was administered to 36 students from high schools in the Bronx, New York. The sample was divided across gender, grade level, participation/non-participation in "Just Community" interventions, ethnicity, and responsiveness in a judgment-action experiment.;The inter-rater reliability for coding the salience of the moral-self-as-object was 70% to 90% exact, r;Coding of the salience of the moral-self-as-object showed predictive validity for moral action (X... |
