The moral disengagement scale-24: Factorial structure and cross-cultural comparison in Spanish and Colombian adolescents.

Abstract

Objective: Moral disengagement is one of the most explored cognitive strategies for understanding why adolescents engage in aggressive behavior. Moral disengagement research has been lacking in Latin American countries, as there is limited research on cultural differences between adolescents. The moral disengagement scale (MDS) is the most commonly measure used but previous studies applied different factorial structures. This study aimed to compare the three commonly used the factorial structure of MDS-24 in a confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) and its association with bullying. Using a cross-sectional design, the study also explored the cross-cultural measurement invariance (MI) in MDS-24 and the differences between Spanish and Colombian adolescents. Method: Data were collected from Spanish (n = 1,396; M age = 13.6; 49% girls) and Colombian adolescents (n = 1,298; M age = 14.12; 49% girls). Results: The CFA showed that the eight-factor structure had the best model fit. The eight moral disengagement mechanisms were positively associated with both bullying perpetration and victimization. Furthermore, moral disengagement mechanisms evidenced their predictive utility for Spanish and Colombian adolescents' involvement in bullying perpetration, once the effects of gender, age, and bullying victimization were controlled for. After confirming cross-cultural MI, Colombian adolescents generally reported higher levels of moral disengagement mechanisms than their Spanish peers. Conclusions:The findings contribute to the development of a measure of a cognitive risk strategy for bullying behavior. It also provides a valuable exploration of the MDS among Spanish-speaking adolescents and contributes to the scarcely explored field of cross-cultural differences in justification of transgressive behavior.

Integrating prosocial and proenvironmental behaviors: the role of moral disengagement and peer social norms

“…Moral Disengagement. We used the instrument developed by Caprara and colleagues (1996), which has already been used in Latin-American adolescent samples (Concha-Salgado et al, 2022;Romera et al, 2022). It has 32 items and uses a Likert type scale of five levels (completely disagree to agree completely).…”

The effect of cyberbullying perpetration on empathy and moral disengagement: Testing a mediation model in a three-wave longitudinal study.

“…The Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement Scale (Caprara et al, 1995; Spanish version in Romera et al, 2023) was the instrument used to measure the strategies of MD. The questionnaire used is composed of 24 items distributed in four factors, with five Likert-type response options (1 = strongly disagree ; 2 = partially agree ; 3 = generally agree ; 4 = strongly agree ; 5 = totally agree ).…”

Minimizing responsibility in the aggressive dynamics of bullying and its impact on other strategies of moral disengagement: a longitudinal study

“…Minimizing responsibility (MR) and the other moral disengagement strategies (cognitive restructuring, distortion of consequences and dehumanization) were measured using the Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement Scale (Caprara et al, 1996) and adapted to Spanish by Romera et al (2023). This questionnaire is made up of 24 items which cover the four MD strategies, and each question has five Likert-type response options with values ranging from one to five (1 = strongly disagree; 2 = partly agree; 3 = I agree in general; 4 = strongly agree; 5 = totally agree).…”