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Original Article

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire

Independent Scale Validation in a New Zealand Sample

Published Online:January 01, 2014https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000201

Abstract

The Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) measures five universal moral foundations of Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity. This study provided an independent test of the factor structure of the MFQ using Confirmatory Factor Analysis in a large New Zealand national probability sample (N = 3,994). We compared the five-factor model proposed by Moral Foundations Theory against alternative single-factor, two-factor, three-factor, and hierarchical (five foundations as nested in two second order factors) models of morality. The hypothesized five-factor model proposed by Moral Foundations Theory provided a reasonable fit. These findings indicate that the five-factor model of moral foundations holds in New Zealand, and provides the first independent test of the factor structure of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire.

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