Moral, conventional, and personal rules: The perspective of foster youth

Forty-five foster youth (9–13 year old and 14–17 year olds) were asked to evaluate moral, conventional, and personal rules and violations by providing judgments and reasons. The results suggest that foster youths' judgments distinguished between the moral, conventional, and personal domains. However, in providing reasons to support their judgments or evaluations, the findings revealed that the foster youth referred to social conventional reasoning even when evaluating moral and personal rules and violations. Thus, these results are not consistent with the data reported with normative populations. Age, sex differences, and ethnicity differences were also found. The implications of the results of this study for understanding and working with youth in foster care and other non-normative populations were discussed.