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The Defining Issues Test or the DIT is a component model of moral development devised by James Rest in 1979. The University of Minnesota formally established the Center for the Study of Ethical Development as a vehicle for research around this test in 1982. The Defining Issues Test uses a Likert-type scale to give quantitative rankings to five moral dilemmas, the data of which are then analyzed. The analysis of this data reveals information about three schemas of moral reasoning: the Personal Interests Schema, the Maintaining Norms Schema and the Post-conventional Schema. One of the test's original purposes was to assess the transition of moral development from adolescence to adulthood. In 1999 the test was revised in the DIT-2 for brevity, clarity and more powerful validity criteria. The Defining Issues Test has been dubbed "Neo-Kohlbergian" by its constituents as it emphasizes cognition, personal construction, development and postconventional moral thinking - reflective of the work by Lawrence Kohlberg and his stages of moral development. |
The Defining Issues Test is a device for activating moral schemas (to the extent that a person has developed them) and for assessing them in terms of importance judgments. Based on Kohlberga's theory of moral development, the subject's task is to read a moral dilemma, and rate and rank corresponding statements in terms of their moral importance.
As the subject encounters an item that both makes sense and also taps into the subject's preferred schema, that item is rated and ranked as highly important. Alternatively, when the subject encounters an item that either doesn't make sense or seems simplistic and unconvincing, the item receives a low rating and is passed over for the next item. The items of the Defining Issues Test balance "bottom up" processing (stating just enough of a line of argument to activate a schema) with "top down" processing (not a full line of argument so that the subject has to "fill in" the meaning from schema already in the subject's head).
In the Defining Issues Test we are interested in knowing which schemas the subject brings to the task (are already in the subject's head). Presumably those are the schemas that structure and guide the subject's thinking in decision-making beyond the test situation. SOURCE: http://www.centerforthestudyofethicaldevelopment.net/Instruments,%20Services,%20and%20Materials.htm
DIT DEFINING ISSUES TEST University of Minnesota (Copyright, James Rest, 1979)
HEINZ AND THE DRUG
In Europe a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money on it." So Heinz got desperate and began to think about breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
Should Heinz steal the drug? __Should Steal __Can't Decide __Should not steal
Please rate the following statements in terms of their importance. (1=Great importance, 2=Much importance, 3=Some Importance, 4=Little importance, 5=No importance)
__1. Whether a community's laws are going to be upheld.
__2. Isn't it only natural for a loving husband to care so much for his wife that he'd steal?
__3. Is Heinz willing to risk getting shot as a burglar or going to jail for the chance that stealing the drug might help?
__4. Whether Heinz is a professional wrestler, or had considerable influence with professional wrestlers.
__5. Whether Heinz is stealing for himself or doing this solely to help someone else.
__6. Whether the druggist's rights to his invention have to be respected.
__7. Whether the essence of living is more encompassing than the termination of dying, socially and individually.
__8. What values are going to be the basis for governing how people act towards each other.
__9. Whether the druggist is going to be allowed to hide behind a worthless law which only protects the rich anyhow.
__10.Whether the law in the case is getting in the way of the most basic claim of any member of society.
__11.Whether the druggist deserves to be robbed for being so greedy and cruel.
__12.Would stealing in such a case bring about more total good for the whole society or not.
Now please rank the top four most important statements. Put the number of the statement in the blank:
__ Most important item
__ Second most important item
__ Third most important item
__ Fourth most important item
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