Development and Validation of a Moral Intelligence Measure for theAdolescent Children of Veterans

War has many psychological and behavioral consequences for the veteran and other members of his family. Many factors, including moral intelligence, play a protective role against the psychological damage of these families. This study aimed to design and validate the psychometric properties of the moral intelligence measure for the adolescent children of veterans.

For this descriptive correlational research with the experimentation approach, a sample of 325 adolescent girls and boys aged from 14 to 18 years living in Tehranin 2019, who were studying in the first and second secondary schools were selected using available methods from regions 2 and 5. Then, from each of those areas, 4 schools (2 girls ‘schools and 2 boys’ schools) were selected by simple random sampling, and finally thestudents of 14 classes answered the designed moral intelligence questionnaire and Maslow’s self-actualization. Exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to design and validate the questionnaire’s psychometric properties. Data using software SPSS 21 were analyzed.

To extract the underlying factors of the 70-item Moral Intelligence Questionnaire, the Kaiser-Mir-Oliken (KMO) index was equal to 0.858, and the Bartlett spherical index was equal to 7208.51 and was statistically significant at the level of 0.01. Based on the common meanings of the items, the first component was “maintaining the dignity of others”, the second component was “adherence to principles”, the third component was “moral sensitivity”, the fourth component was “moral self-efficacy” and the fifth component was “ego empowerment”. Based on Cronbach’s alpha coefficients’ results obtained more than 0.7 for the components and a positive and significant correlation coefficient (p<0.01), the questionnaire was reliable and valid.

The Moral Intelligence Scale is a reliable and valid tool as a model for measuring moral intelligence in the adolescent children of veterans in Tehran concerning socio-cognitive changes in Iranian society.