Examining the Influence of Educational Attainment on Moral Reasonin

The purpose of this study was to determine if educational attainment influences moral reasoning. The revised version of the Defining Issues Test (DIT-2) measures respondents' moral reasoning in relation to Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Specifically, the new index score (N2 score) of the DIT-2 reveals the extent to which participants engage in principled moral reasoning, as well as the extent to which participants reject moral reasoning indicative of Kohlberg's stages two and three. The DIT-2 was proctored to 100 same-age subjects, half of whom had a high school educational attainment and half of whom had a college educational attainment. After filtering out invalid questionnaires, 80 DIT-2 surveys were kept for analysis: 38 from those with a high school educational attainment and 42 from those with a college educational attainment. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) (alpha = .05) was run to determine if the N2 scores of the two groups significantly differed. Analysis revealed that educational attainment significantly influences moral reasoning, as the mean of the college educational attainment group's N2 scores was significantly higher than the mean of the high school educational attainment group's N2 scores. Implications for the field of counseling, specifically conducted in a correctional setting, are discussed.