Evaluation

• Evaluation: Ethical issues

  • Valid consent - it may have been difficult to give this as children but when the participants were older they should have understood what they were agreeing to, especially as they'd taken part before
• Ethical issues

  • Risk of harm - some of the dilemmas may have been upsetting to read about, and some may have caused anxiety where the decision making was difficult
• Ethical issues

  • Confidentiality - not an issue as no identities were revealed
• Ethical issues

  • Privacy - participants were probed and questioned at length about their moral decisions and this may been seen as an invasion of privacy of the mind, especially if they were unsure or uncomfortable about their decision making
• Ethical issues

  • Long term risk to beliefs, values, etc - the nature of the research may have forced participants to change their moral beliefs and values etc but Kohlberg would contest this as he would obviously argue that any changes are to do with maturation
• Evaluation: Validity issues

  • Internal validity – elements of the research were standardised such as the moral dilemmas and the questions that followed so this allowed comparisons to be made across time and across cultures. However, the IVs (age and culture) were not open to manipulation so it was hard or Kohlberg to establish cause and effect.
• Ecological validity


  the moral dilemmas were only hypothetical so we cannot be sure how participants would respond if they were in the situation themselves – this may have given a different reflection of their morality.
• Temporal validity


  Kohlberg relates morality to nature so unaffected by changes in experiences or expectations over time.
• Population validity


  the sample represented a number of different cultures so Kohlberg was able to show the order of development is likely to be universal. However, he only studied boys which makes his findings potentially gender biased especially when other researchers, such as Gilligan, suggested that girls and boys moral development is distinct from one another’s.
• Construct validity


  Kohlberg did use a range of moral dilemmas which required quite deep thinking but they did tend to be extreme scenarios and therefore did not represent more everyday examples of morality.
• Social desirability


  participants may have felt under pressure to give certain types of responses to moral dilemmas which were more socially acceptable. Socially acceptable responses are more characteristic of later stages of development so this would explain why morals appeared to change with age as the participants were older and more conscious of how they should be responding even if it was not their true response.
• Researcher bias


  Kohlberg had to interpret the qualitative data he gathered from interviews so he may have unconsciously done this to fit his theory. He may also have influenced responses during interviews in a way that gave him the responses he was expecting.