Moral development in public relations: Measuring duty to society in strategic communication

This exploratory study employed an online version of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) [Rest, J. R. (1979). Development in judging moral issues. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press] to gather data on the ethical decision-making process patterns of 113, U.S.-based public relations practitioners. The DIT is an instrument based on Kohlberg's [Kohlberg, L. (1969) State and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In: E. Goslin, (Ed.) Handbook of socialization: Theory and research. Chicago: Rand McNally] moral development theory, a proven measure of ethical reasoning across dozens of professions. Results show that levels of moral development in public relations significantly differ based on job segment. While corporate and agency practitioners reasoned about their ethics in a statistically similar fashion, these two groups differed substantially from their academic-based counterparts.