Testing the Moral Foundations Questionnaire within a Muslim society: a study among young adults in Pakistan

This paper examines the psychometric properties of the 30-item Moral Foundations Questionnaire among a sample of 370 young adults between the ages of 18 and 26 years who were born in Punjab and who had lived there since their birth. Initial analyses did not support the internal consistency reliability of the five scales of moral predispositions proposed by this measure. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis identified two factors that distinguished not between areas of moral predisposition, but between the two styles of items (relevance and judgement), each of which included all five predispositions. Correlations with personal religiosity suggested that the scale comprising 12 judgement items (alpha = .88) was susceptible to religious sentiment, but that the scale comprising 12 relevance items (alpha = .89) was not. The scale of 12 relevance items is commended for further testing and application within Muslim societies.