The development of the Francis Moral Values Scales: a study among 16- to 18-year-old students taking Religious Studies at A level in the UK

Abstract

This paper reports on the development of scales for measuring moral values in three domains:anti-social behaviour, sex and relationships, and substance use. Students studying religion at A level in 25 schools were invited to respond to 32 Likert items that referred to a wide range of moral issues and behaviours, employing a five-point response scale. In the first study, responses from 652 students were subject to an exploratory factor analysis, which identified three factors that explain 47% of the variance. Three summated scales were produced that had very good internal consistency reliability: the anti-social behaviour scale (seven items, Cronbach's alpha = .83), the sex and relationships scale (seven items, alpha = .84), and the substance use scale (five items, alpha = .87). In the second study, a repeat survey among the same schools a year later resulted in a second sample of 462 students. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the 19 items identified in the first study could be satisfactorily fitted to a model with the same three latent constructs. These constructs are recommended as a parsimonious way of assessing general moral values among adolescents.

Assessing Christian learning: Towards a practices-based approach to faith, vocation, and assessment

“…Two of the most well-known independently validated and publicly reported measures are the attitudinal scales developed by Francis (1979) and the Cardus Education Survey (CES; Neven Van Pelt et al., 2012; Sikkink, 2012). Francis has measured the contribution of schools to students’ religious, personal, and social values in England and Wales over the last 30 years and his research constitutes an impressive body of peer-reviewed material (Robbins and Francis, 2010; Village and Francis, 2016). The Francis attitudinal scale has also been employed by Baker (2013) to explore the religious beliefs and values of graduates from independent UK Christian schools, though this work did not examine teaching and learning practices.…”

A Parental Competence Scale: Dimensions and Their Association With Adolescent Outcomes

“…Certain instruments exist that assess values in children. Such is the case with the Scale for Preschool Social Values Acquisition (Atabey and Ömeroglu, 2016), the Multi-Component Gratitude Measure [MCGM] (Morgan et al, 2017), the Moral Values Internalization Questionnaire [MVIQ] (Hardy et al, 2008), and the Francis Moral Values Scales (Village and Francis, 2016). However, these instruments do not deal specifically with how (or whether) parents encourage these values in their children.…”

Values and Intercultural Experiences Through Picture Books

“…Therefore, picture books are an appropriate tool to teach positive attitudes toward interculturality. These attitudes are psychologically related to the acquisition of certain values (Village & Francis, 2016) based on moral commitment to others (Higham & Djohari, 2018) and on human rights (Espinel Bernal, 2017;Féron, 2014;Gordon, 2018). By showing characters who belong to different races, ethnicities, and cultures, picture books provide an opportunity to think critically about discrimination and social justice (Lysaker & Sedberry, 2015;Seidel & Rokne, 2011).…”

“…In addition, Boyd, Causey, and Galda (2015) stated that this type of intercultural literature has a commitment to diversity that encourages students to accept people who are different. This genre thus acts not only as a mirror in which students are reflected but also as a window through which they can see other cultural experiences (Wu, 2017), especially because text and images are intertwined in picture books (Nikolajeva & Scott, 2013;Salisbury & Styles, 2012;Van der Linden, 2015).…”