Development, reliability, and validity of the Moral Identity Questionnaire

As areas of psychology focus more on how people make moral choices, there is a need for psychometrically sound instruments that include meaningful components of moral cognition. The purpose of this research was the development of a measure of moral identity that would encompass both integrity and the importance of morality to self-identity. In two large samples, we developed the Moral Identity Questionnaire (MIQ), and established internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and evidence of validity, including confirmatory factorial analysis, and correlations with current measures of morality. In summary, the MIQ, which measures the salience of moral integrity and moral self independently of political orientation or gender, provided scores that were reliable and valid, with strong correlations to measures of similar constructs.