Moral judgment and public school superintendents in Texas

The purpose of this study was to examine moral judgment of public school superintendents in Texas when faced with moral dilemmas. The Defining Issues Test-2 was used to measure levels of moral judgment. A demographic survey was also used in order to examine the relationship between moral judgment levels and certain demographic variables. A stratified random sample of all public school superintendents based on district size were surveyed. Surveys were mailed to 200 small districts, 100 medium districts, and 50 large districts. A total of 104 superintendents participated in this study. T-test for independent samples, one-way analysis of variance, and linear regression were used for purposes of data analysis. An alpha level of .05 was used as the level of significance. Data were entered and manipulated using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. Results of the study indicated no statistically significant relationship existed between the superintendent?s moral judgment level and certain demographic variables using t-test and analysis of variance measures. However, results from the linear regression showed that four of the independent variable subgroups contributed to moral judgment levels. The four independent variable subgroups were respondents who had served 16-20 years as a superintendent, who had served 16-20 years in his or her current district, who had a salary in the $50,000-$74,999 range, and whose ethnicity was Hispanic.