Validation of the German Version of the Moral Disengagement in Doping Scale

As an athlete's moral disengagement is one of the strongest predictors for doping intention, the purpose of the present study was to validate a German version of the Moral Disengagement in Doping Scale (MDDS; Kavussanu et al., 2016) by examining its psychometric properties. In a sample of 1,038 athletes, confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) replicated the postulated one-dimensional structure of the scale, and further analyses indicated acceptable internal consistency and retest reliability. Multigroup CFAs confirmed the measurement invariance across different subsamples as well as across male and female participants. Moreover, construct (criterion) validity was established in a subsample of 724 athletes through correlations between the MDDS-D and related constructs such as doping intention and susceptibility, anticipated guilt, and collective moral norms. Taken together, these results suggest that the MDDS-D is a suitable instrument for measuring doping moral disengagement in the German language area, which may be especially beneficial for the evaluation of doping prevention programs focusing on moral variables.