A Study To Investigate The Relationship Between Self-Esteem and Moral Judgment

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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS

AND MORAL JUDGMENT Sumaera Mehmood
M.Phil (Education) at Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan
VOL 3, NO 6
OCTOBER 2011
A STUDY TO INVESTIGATE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-ESTEEM
Nasir Ahmad
PhD scholar (Education) at Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan
Shafqat Hussain
PhD scholar (Education) at Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan
The current research was undertaken to investigate the relationship between self-esteem and were collected from 3 different schools (i.e. Asif Public School, House of Secondary ages 13 to 18 years. Self-esteem Scale of Raffia(1999), comprising 29 items, was used to developed by Anna L. ( Communion & Uwe P. Gielen 2001), was used to measure moral Eleven social values are assessed in the scale including contract, affiliation, life, property, law and legal justice. It was hypothesized that high levels of self-esteem result in high levels of moral judgment but results of the present research showed that higher stages of moral judgment are not related with High Self-esteem. Key Words: Self Esteem, Moral judgment Introduction Self-esteem is a significant constituent of personality. It is a way of assessing ones feelings, values, attitudes, fears, strengths and weaknesses (Burger & Schonoling, 1993). This refers how we feel about ourselves or how we value ourselves. Self-esteem is a key to success in life. Although children cannot articulate a concept of self-worth until about age eight, they show by their behavior that they have one. Self-esteem at this stage tends to be global such as I am good and may depend on adulthood approval. As children grow up,
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judgment. Padua Moral Judgment Scale was a 28 items objective test grouped in four parts.
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measure self-esteem while the Urdu version of Padua Moral Judgment scale, originally
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Education and Al-Ameen Public School Rawalpindi). The sample consisted of students of
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Moral Judgment among students. The study sample consisted of 81 students and the data
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Abstract
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M.Phil (Education) at Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan
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evaluation of competence and adequacy becomes critical in shaping and maintaining a sense of self-esteem or self worth. The development of Self-esteem is more affected by others opinions and appraisals (Harper, Burkhans, and Dweek, as cited in Papalia, 1998). Self-esteem plays an important role in ones nature and the degree of ones Self-esteem ranges from high Self-esteem to low Self-esteem. It has an important part of a persons personality. It is the relative balance of positive and negative feeling she/he has about himself/herself. It may be greatly influenced by certain aspects of ones appearance and background, or skills that are considered socially important. These features became influential for children because they may seem to be sources of acceptance or rejection by others (Mickinng, 1976). leads to various systems of ethics, philosophy and reality. Thus, most often human relationship to the universe is described in terms of ones ethics, moral values, ideals, is vitally relevant to every person on the planet. Assessment of other peoples character is assessments are based on evaluation of the moral trajectories of individuals (Kupperman attempts to answer the questions what is the purposes of my life? and how do I go about Hence it gives rise to the term morality that refers to the code of values each of us uses to decide on the choices and actions we make (Honderich, 1995). American Heritage Dictionary (2002) defines morality as a system of ideas of right and wrong conduct. A moral sense is inborn in man and through the ages it has served as the common means of standard moral behaviors, approving certain qualities and condemning others. While this instinctive faculty may vary from person to person, human conscience has consistently declared certain moral qualities to be good and others to be bad. Justice courage and truthfulness have always found praise. Similarly, in assessing the standards of good and bad in the collective behavior of society as a whole, only those societies have been considered worthy of honor which have possessed the virtue of organization, discipline, mutual attention and compassion and which have established a social order based on justice, freedom and equality (Mavldudi, 1948). religions, which interrelate to and overlap each other. It is not hard to appreciate why ethics perhaps one of the most important moderators involved in interpersonal interaction such 1991). Ethic is a code of values that guides our choices and actions. Essentially, it asks and achieving it? The actions to answer it are conditional and motivated by some purpose. People have a different view and concept about the universe, the place of man in it that
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As human beings, we live our lives in groups. Because we are interdependent, one persons activities can affect the welfare of others. Consequently, if we are to live with one another -if society is to be possible -- we must share certain conceptions of what is right and what is wrong. Each of us must pursue our interests, be it for food, shelter, clothing, sex, power or fame, within the context of a moral order governed by rules. Morality involves how we go about distributing the benefits and burdens of a cooperative group existence (Eisenberg, Reykowski & Staub, 1989: Wilson, 1993). Moral development refers to the process by which children adopt principles that lead them to evaluate given behaviors as right and others as wrong and to govern their own actions in terms of these principles. If media interest is any indication, many Americans are quite concerned with the moral status of to be a moral vacuum. contemporary youngsters. And they look to the school to teach values to fill what they seem
innate purity and that immoral behavior results from the corrupting influence of adults. The Lickona model (1983) proposes a four components program designed to facilitate moral behavior. The four components include self-esteem, cooperative learning, moral reflection, and participatory decision-making. Lickona has collected data that demonstrate that the systematic use of this model produces an increase in moral behavior among students. Lickona (1983) defines self-esteem as a students sense of mastery or competence. He contends that showing students that you respect their uniqueness as an individual is powerful tool to raise their self-esteem. Higher self-esteem, writes Lickona, leads to the greater likelihood of moral behavior. Meriwether (2003) in his article has maintained that sanctions based upon emotional well-being or upon self-esteem are insufficient for motivating consistent moral behaviour, and they reduce ultimately to hedonism. This is also the case even in the hypothetical event that all moral action results in
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writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), holds that children are characterized by
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whether the child becomes righteous or sinful. The third doctrine, represented by the
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that the child is morally neutral- a tabula rasa- and that training and experience determine
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intervention of adults. Another view, put forward by John Locke (1632-1740), maintains
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sinful beings. As such they require redemption through the deliberate and punitive
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such as Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430). According to the view, children are naturally
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moral development of children. One is the doctrine of original sin, favored by theologians
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Historically, there have been three major philosophical doctrines regarding the
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heightened self-esteem, and all immoral action results in lower self-esteem (Meriwether, 2003). The present study attempts to measure the relationship between self-esteem and moral judgment. It attempts to show that if a teacher respects the uniqueness of a child his/her moral judgment is also high. Higher self-esteem leads to greater likelihood of moral judgment. But the result of this study shows a different picture of this model. The present study has enormous implications in the field of personality psychology. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-esteem and moral Judgment. The study aimed at the following objectives: i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. To find out the relationship of demographic variables with self-esteem and stages of moral To investigate the effect of high self-esteem on the stages of moral judgment of secondary school students. secondary school students. of secondary school students. of secondary school students. To examine the effect of age difference on the stages of Moral Judgment and Self-esteem of To explore the effect of number of siblings on the stages of moral judgment and self-esteem To find out the effect of parental income on the stages of moral judgment and selkf-esteem To analyze the effect of gender difference on the stages of moral judgment and self-estem To recommend practical measures for the high-ups in the light of the findings of the study. The following hypotheses were formulated and translated in this study. i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. High self-esteem is positively correlated with moral judgment. Moral judgment and Slef-esteem amoung school childern differs on the basis of gender difference. Children who have less number of siblings shall have high level of moral values and Self-esteem as compared to children with more number of siblings. Self-esteem and Moral Judgment differs on the basis of students age difference. High and low levels of parents income will have effect on children self-esteem and stages of moral judgment. Higher self-esteem will lead to higher moral judgment 137 judgment of the secondary school students.
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of the students of secondary school students.
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METHODS
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The research design employed in the present study was the social survey. The basic idea behind the survey methodology is to measure variables by asking people questions and then to examine relationships among the variables. Surveys attempt to capture attitude or patterns of behavior. The present survey used the cross-sectional design, which asks questions of students at one point in time. It was a small-scale survey involving probability sampling, and a sample size of 81 respondents. The sample of the study was randomly taken from the following public schools of Rawalpindi. ii. iii. House of Secondary Education Al-Ameen Public School i. Asif Public School
Two questionnaires were used to obtain information from the sample about the i. ii. Repharezed version of Self-esteem
ANNOVA, Pearson r Percentages.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem scale was at four point rating scale. This scale was taken from Qaid-e-azam University. The self-esteem scale used to assess the self-esteem of the respondent. There were 29 items the four response categories extremely true, some what true, neither true nor false, and extremely false.
Moral Judgment
Urdu version of Padua Moral Judgment scale was used which was originally developed by Anna L. (Communion & Uwe P. Gielen 2001). It was a 28 items objective test grouped in four parts. Eleven social values are assessed including contract, affiliation, life, property, law and legal justice. Each part consists of seven items (each items indicate a specific stage 138
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OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS OF VARIABLES
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Data were analyized through different tests i.e. T test, Mean, Standard Deviation,
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Padua Moral Judgment Scale
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relationship between self-esteem and moral judgments scales.
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and mixed stage of Gibbs theory of moral Judgment) whose answer on four points rating scale ranging from strong disagree to agree. For scoring, one score was assigned to strongly disagree and four score was assigned to strongly agree. It also has two open ended questions. Item no.1, item no.5, item no.7, item no.9, item no.10, item no.11, item no.15, item no.17, item no.21, and item no.23 belonged to stage2 according to Gibbs Theory. And item no.3, item no.13, item no.18, item no.20, and item no.24 belonged to stage1 according to Gibbs Theory. While item no.4 and item no.27 belonged to stage3, according to Gibbs Theory. And item no.2, item no.6, item no.8, item no.12, item no.14, item no.16, item no.19, item no.22, item no.25, item no.26, and item no.28 belong to stage4 according to Gibbs Theory.
Groups Low Self-esteem Moderate Self-esteem High Self-esteem
N 33 29 19
self-esteem. Scores were divided into three groups, scores for low self-esteem ranged from 44-57, moderate self-esteem from 58-71 and high self-esteem from 72-98. Significance of the Difference between Mean Self-esteem of Male and Female Students Scores.
Gender Male Female N 48 33 Mean 64.16 58.88 SD 11.48 11.01 2.07 >.05 t P
df=79, t at.05=1.99 Table 6 shows the mean Self-esteem scores of the male and female students. The 139
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low self-esteem is high. All items were positive. High scores on the scale reflect a higher
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students whose self-esteem was very high is very low while the number of students having
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This table shows low, moderate, and high self-esteem scores of the students. The number
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Low, Moderate, and High Self-esteem Scores of the Students (N=81)
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RESULTS
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results of the table shows that there was a significant difference between mean self-esteem of male and female students. Self-esteem level was a higher among male as compared to females. Females have a low level of self-esteem as compared to males. Mean and Standard Deviation of the Scores of Different Stages of Moral Judgment Scores of the Sample. (N=81). Stages Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Mean 13.01 27.27 6.51 33.16 SD 3.29 4.32 1.18
shows that student in stage-4 are more developed as compared to stage-1, stage-2, and
Stage 3 Stage 4 df=79,
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Stage 1
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Scores.
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Significance of Correlation between Self-esteem Scores and Stages of Moral Judgment
Person r 0.08 -0.11 0.18 -0.06
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stage-3.
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Table 12 shows the mean scores of Moral Judgment stages. The result of the table
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P 0.47 0.30 0.10 0.57 r at 0.05=0.217
The result of the table shows that there were no relationship between Self-esteem and moral judgment. But as compare to other stages, stage-3 was statically correlated with self-esteem as compared to other stages.
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Stages with Frequency of Students at Each Stage of Moral Judgments. Stage1 No 20 % 25% Stage2 No 11 % 14% Stage3 No 26 % 32% Stage4 No 26 % 32% Total No 81
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% 100%
Table 14 shows that mostly (32% each) the students were at stage-3 and stage-4 as compared to other stages (i.e. stage-1 and stage-2). CONCLUSIONS
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No self-esteem differences were found between younger and older students. And younger and older students.
and 2.
high-income groups were found non-sifnificant. v. vi. vii. viii. No differences of self-esteem and Moral Judgment were found among students with fewer and more number of siblings. A greater number of students were on stage-3 and stage-4 in Moral Judgment scores. Majority of students were having low levels of self-esteem. Stage-1 (13 to14 yrs olds) and stage-3 (16 yrs olds) group percentage was low as compared to other stages (stage-2 and stage-4) so that results show those students were developed in some stages of Kohlbergs and Gibbs stages.
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iv.
The Self-esteem and Moral Judgment scores differences between the low and
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and the female students at stages 3 and 4; whereas, they did not differ at stages 1
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students. Also, real moral judgment differences were found between the male
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iii.
Significant self-esteem differences were found between male and female
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also, no consistent differences in stages of moral judgment were found among
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i.
No relationship was found between self-esteem and moral judgment.
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Based on the above findings, the followings conclusions were made:
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DISCUSSIONS
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The present research aimed to analyze the relationship between self-esteem and moral judgment. The main purpose was to determine the correlation between self-esteem and moral judgment. To achieve this purpose, two instruments were administered to measure self-esteem: 1) self- esteem scale (of Riffai 1999) 2) translated version of Padua Moral Judgment scale (PMJS) (of Ann.L.Comunian & Gielen, 2001). The psychometric properties were determined for both the scales, which proved to be satisfactory. The inter items of both the scales indicated a high internal consistency with the total of both the scales.
many other researches (e.g. Gielen, 2001; colboy and Kohlberg, 19887). For the present researches using Kohlbergs theory in different cultures found no claims for stage 5 and esteem to the respondents developed by Raffia (1999). First of all the study hypothesized that there is a relationship between stages of of PMJS and self-esteem scores was non-sifnificant. Thus, the study revealed that higher stage of moral reasoning is not related with self-esteem or vice versa. The first stage was negatively correlated with self-esteem.the value founded in the first stage was 0.08 which means the results were non-sifnificant because the significant level for r is r=0.217(see table 13). This indicates that there is no relationship between self-esteem and stage 1 of Moral Judgment. And the stage-2 of the self-esteem was negatively correlated (r=-.11) at the significant level r at=.05(see table 11). This indicated that the relationship was negative. The stage-3 was also non-sifnificant (r=.18) but comparatively it was more related to the self-esteem as compared to other stages. This implies that the students who have high selfesteem will be in stage-3 of moral judgment and the stage-4 is negatively correlated with
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moral judgment and self-esteem. However, it was found that the relationship between stages
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stage 6. Miller 1990 and Gardines 1998). The self-esteem scale used to assess the self-
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research Gibbss (1992) revised four stage moral development model was used (as later
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valid. The universality of the stage theory of moral development was also put into test by
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Kohlberg (1987) proposed that this theory of moral development is cross culturally
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stage-1 of moral judgment.
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self-esteem (r=-.06) which implies that the students who have high self-esteem will be in
On the basis of literature review it was hypothesized that there are significant gender differences in self-esteem levels of the students; in this case the result of the study supports the hypothesis. The results show a significant difference (t=2.07) between self-esteem levels of the boys and girls (see table 6). Findings show that girls have low self-esteem as compared to boys. There are many researches that strengthened these findings. O Malley and Bachman (1983) concluded that girls have low self-esteem as compared to boys. Simmons and Rosenberg (1975) also showed the pre-adolescent girls scored lower than boys on self-esteem.
stage-4 of the moral judgdment (t=2.00 & 3.00) (see table 7). It implies that moral judgment more developed in stage-1 as compared to the boys. There was an non-sifnificant difference accordance with the claim of other researchers who did cross cultural research in this regard
moral judgment of the students. Older students self-esteem is higher than the younger students. And stages of moral judgment show significant differences and confirmed the stage progression hypothesis. Interestingly stage-3 was statistically significant as compared to other stages (stage-1, stage-2 & stage-4). Also a major group of respondents gave judgments at stage-2 and stage-4 form all the age groups (i.e., 13 to 14 years and 15 to 18 years), which tends to support Millers (1990) claims that Indian people emphasize interpersonal considerations in rendering a moral decision. It is also evident from the fact that in Pakistani collectivistic society relationships are more important. significant relationship between self-esteem and moral judgment were found. However, no
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The study also hypothesized that the age will effect the self-esteem and stages of
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(Gielen & Communion, 2001).
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on the scores of others stages ( i.e,. stage 1, and stage2) of Moral Judgment which is in
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of the girls is higher as compared to the boys in stage-4. It shows that the girls are morally
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judgment. The study shows a significant difference in gender with respect to the stage-3 and
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It was hypothesized that the gender difference will effect on the stages of moral
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Another assumption related to socio-economic status was that student of low parental income have low self-esteem as compared to students of middle parental income. In many studies, parental income has been divided into three levels, low, middle and high. It was hypothesized that students of low parental income have low moral judgment. But findings indicate no difference between the two groups. It implies that there is no significant difference between parental income and moral judgment. It also shows that parental income has no-significant difference at stages of moral judgment. These finding show that the students with middle parental income have high self-esteem and moral judgment (see table 8 & 9). These findings also show a negative correlation between selfesteem and moral judgment.
It was hypothesized that children who have less number of siblings have high self-
differences on the stages of Padua Moral Judgment.
higher than other stages (i.e. stage 2 ,stage 3) and the female scores are higher than the male scores. In the stage-4, the relevant response was higher in the 16 years group as compared to irrelevant responses in the 16 years age group. In no group the percentage is equal to 100% because many students did not answer all the questions; they ignored many items. These students do not seem to have understood the objective of the study. There is a limited number of students of ages 17 to 18 years included in the study, whereas, a large number of students of ages 15 to 16 years was included in the study. The mixed results of the relevant and irrelevant categories for lower and higher age groups are probably because of social desirability.
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show mixed results of the stages of PMJS. In stage-1 and stage-4, the scores are frequently
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The content analysis of the two open-ended questions given at the end of PMJS
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stages of Padua Moral Judgment. The result of the study shows there are non-sifnificant
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It implies that children with less number of siblings are morally developed in the
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the results (see table 10)
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there were non-sifnificant differences between the two groups. The hypothesis is rejected by
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The number of students with low self-esteem (N=33, scores=668) was higher than the number of students having high self-esteem (N=19, scores=1046). As regards Moral Judgment stages, more number of students was on stage-3 and stage-4 as compared to other stages (stage-1 and stage-2). So that average scores were also high at stage-4 (M=33.16) and stage-2 (M=27.27) as compared to other stages i.e. stage-1 (M=13.01) and stage-3 (M=6.51) (see table10).
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References
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American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (2000). 4th ed. Houghton: Mifflin Company. Burger, W. R., & Schmolling, P.rown, P. (1993). Human services in contemporary. (31'd ed).California: Brooks/Cole publishing co. Berk, L. E. (1989). Child Developmentalt. Baston:AlIyn & Bacon. Gielen, U. P., & Comunian, A. L (2001). A paper presented at the 30th annual meeting of email article.
St.Parl New York. Los Angles San Francisco.
Harper, J. F., & Marshall, F. (1991) Adolescents problems and their relationship to self-
Honderich, T. (1995), The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University
Mckinney, F., Lorion, R. P., & Zax, M. (1976). Effective Behavior and Human Development. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. Parsons,D.R, Hinson, L.S, Brown, S.D. ( n.d), Educational Psychology, A Practitioner. Research Model of Testing. West Chaster University Canada. Riffai, F. (1999). Development and evaluation of a self-esteem scale. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. National Institute of Psychology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. Feiser, J. (2003). Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved 20th July 2007 from http://www.Utm.edu/jfieser/ .
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Jenkines, J.(1992), Contemparary Moral Issues, new edition, New York.
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Meriwether, Nicolas. K, (2003). Can Self-Esteem Sanction Morality?.Retrived 25 July, 2007 from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExtSearch_Sea rchValue_0=%28Meriwether%2C+2003%29.+&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=kw&_ pageLabel=ERICSearchResult&newSearch=true&rnd=1203071428615&searchtype=ba sic. Maududi, A. (1948). Moral System of Islam. Lahore: Idara Tarjaman ul Quran Kupperman, J. (1991) Character. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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