Perceived Parental Moral Disengagement, Moral Identity, Moral Disengagement, and Academic Integrity of Undergraduate Students

Abstract

This study was focused on exploring the relationship between perceived parental moral disengagement, moral identity, moral disengagement, and academic integrity of undergraduate university students. Another objective of this study was to study the gender differences across all the study variables. This study also investigated the mediating role of moral identity and moral disengagement for studying the association between perceived parental moral disengagement and academic integrity of undergraduate university students. To achieve these objectives a sample (N=299) of undergraduate university students was selected. Male students (n=140) and female students (n=159) with age range (17-23) were included.All the self-reported measures of measuring their perceived parental moral disengagement, moral disengagement, moral identity, and academic integrity were used. All the scales and subscales revealed satisfactory levels of reliability coefficients.The results revealed a significantly negative relationship between perceived parental moral disengagement, academic integrity, and moral Identity. The findings of this study revealed that perceived parental moral disengagement is negatively related with moral identity and academic integrity. Moral identity was found as a significant mediator between perceived parental moral disengagement and academic integrity whereas moral disengagement was a non-significant mediator between perceived parental moral disengagement and academic integrity. Furthermore, this study showed that there are significant gender differences on perceived parental moral disengagement, moral identity, moral disengagement, and academic integrity of undergraduate university students