Moral Reasoning Of Business, Nursing And Liberal Arts Students

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the level of moral reasoning across different majors and between undergraduate and graduate business students at a middle-sized Canadian university. The Defining Issues Test (DIT2), a recent version of the original DIT test, a well-known and widely tested psychometric instrument, is used to measure the level of moral reasoning. The results showed that beginning nursing students scored significantly lower on the DIT2 tests than the upper level liberal arts and business students and that older students scored significantly higher than younger students and that the main variable affecting the level of moral reasoning was the level of formal education of the participants. Even after allowing for the variance caused by age and by the major field of study of the respondents, the level of education by itself is a significant predictor of the P (Principled) score, an output of the DIT2, which is an indicator of the level of moral reasoning. On the other hand, the gender and political views of the respondents did not affect the DIT2 P-scores significantly