Domain-Based Assessment of Social and Moral Development

This project entails the development of a computer based assessment of children's moral and social normative concepts. The project is being funded through the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education as a part of a larger set of assessment services for the Milton Hershey School, in Hershey Pennsylvania. The resulting measure will provide separate measures of moral growth and the attainment of concepts of social convention. The project will also provide the Milton Hershey School with a set of developmentally based benchmarks for high school students' moral and social cognitive growth. The initial phases of the project involve the re-assessment of moral reasoning in adolescence. Currently the assessment of moral development is based on Kohlberg's six-stage sequence which conflates moral reasoning with the emergence of concepts of society and law.

If completely successful, at its completion in 2004, the project will result in an interactive computer-based assessment tool which students may individually self-administer in school resource rooms. Schools will be able to obtain an indication of the effectiveness of their curricula on students' emergence of their moral growth and understanding of societal norms effectively, unobtrusively, and efficiently.