Abstract

MERINO SOTO, César  and  GRIMALDO MUCHOTRIGO, Miriam. Complexity factorial of moral permissiveness toward moral conduct. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2010, vol.27, n.2, pp.297-314. ISSN 1668-7027.

The issue of morality has several facets that describe normative behavior of people and permissiveness towards socially questionable behavior is one of them. The investigation direct about the permissiveness was originated in the United States and in intercultural studies on its variability, and its internal structure and recently in Latin America continued to have some impacton her family size. From a psychometric approach, however, its internal structure in other cultures has not been a goal of such studies and therefore has not confirmed by factorial methods, and that condition can be put into question the validity of the interpretations of the scores. The assessment of internal validity is a necessary step to establish the equivalence of the constructs derived from cross-cultural instruments. This is more critical given the complexity of morality in human experience. Therefore, the objective of this work was to estimate the magnitude of the interdependence of facets of permissiveness in asample of 254 university students in Lima (Peru), from the first until the ninth and tenth course, whose average age was 21-year-old, between men and women, mainly Catholics. To this end, was applied the Morally Debatable Behaviors Scale (Harding & Phillips, 1986), which is a known quantity for assessing the construct of permissiveness. The internal structure was evaluated by a computer program FACTOR and the complexity factor calculations were made with the Program SIMLOAD. The analysis used the common factor analysis model and applying an oblique rotation complexity estimates were obtained by indices of factor simplicity (Fleming, 2003; Fleming & Merino, 2005) in the items and total factor solution. Our results showed underlying three-dimensional behaviors sampled by the questionnaire which follows the internal structure in previous studies. However, we found a high level of complexity factor estimated for the factor solution and for the items. These results warn us that the items covary with various factorial dimensions of the instrument and, therefore, the structure of the instrument has not met one of the indicators for proper interpretation of its dimensionality, i.e., a simple structure. This dimension al complex structure, in other words, indicates that the items share information that can be explained by more than a construct, therefore, the covariation among items with multiple constructs makes it difficult to separate description of the other. Tolerance of certain questionable conduct, therefore, comes from a multidimensional perception of its features, this complexity influences define this kind of behavior so poorly differentiated from other conceptual dimensions of permissiveness. Our results can not reliably be contrasted with previous studies in Latin America (e.g., Mathiesen et al., 1998), because the dimensions have not been stable relative to the location of the items. Finally, the factorial complexity of many items suggest some interpretations on the perception of morally inappropriate conduct and provide empirical evidence of the degree of its complexity, and the questioning of the internal psychometric integrity of the instrument. This study generated a series of questions about how is the best form to assess the construct of moral permissiveness, considering its importance in explaining behaviors that currently are being watched every day and still are not be product of an effective intervention. Some routes are also discussed research related to our results and the scope of this paper.

Keywords : Complexity factor students; Internal validity; Moral permissiveness; Morality.

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