Development and Validation of the Moral Injury Scales for Youth.

This paper describes the development and preliminary psychometric properties of the Moral Injury Scales for Youth (MISY). Although to date, the construct of moral injury has been focused on studies of samples of adult military personnel, the MISY was developed to extend the study of moral injury to interpersonal relationship stressors and transgressions among emerging adults, adolescents, and children. Participants in a validation study included 473 undergraduate students (78.6% female, age range: 18-25 years) recruited from a psychology participant pool at a large university in the Western United States as well as a second sample of 185 students recruited from the same pool, to assess reliability. Results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated that the MISY demonstrated a five-factor latent structure with good internal consistencies. Correlational analyses indicated that the MISY subscales demonstrated good convergent validity, divergent validity, and test-retest reliability. The findings suggest that the MISY is a psychometrically reliable and valid measure of moral injury in emerging adults, with utility for examining moral injury in nonmilitary youth populations.