NEW DIRECTIONS FOR STUDENT SERVICES, no. 139, Fall 2012 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ss.20026 93 9 Providing Evidence in the Moral Domain Diane L. Cooper, Debora L. Liddell, Tiffany J. Davis, Kira Pasquesi The pressure on higher education to provide evidence for our work means that we need to assess our efforts to help students grow and develop. The frst step in approaching your assessment, then, is to clarify your intended targets. Do you want to measure moral reasoning or sensitivity? Are you more interested in empathy and concern for others or a commitment to social justice? In this chapter, we review the instrumentation and methods typically used to measure moral competence, and suggest close proxies for the domain. Measuring the Moral Domain Through Quantitative Methods Most of the widely used measures of moral growth utilizing quantitative methodology discussed here are based in Kohlberg’s work (1981) on moral education and reasoning. Defning Issues Test. The Defning Issues Test (DIT) is a well-known and well-respected measure of moral reasoning across many academic dis- ciplines for over thirty-fve years. Few professionals are unfamiliar with the famous Heinz dilemma that appeared in Rest’s (1979) original version of the instrument. The Defning Issues Test, Version 2 (DIT-2), updates the original dilemmas and issue statements, is shorter, and has clearer instruc- tions (Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, and Bebeau, 1999). The DIT-2 emphasizes cognition, promotes self-construction, portrays development, and charac- terizes the shift to postconventional moral thinking. Whereas Kohlberg’s theory outlines six stages, the DIT uses schemas that may shift across tra- ditional Kohlbergian stages. These schemas are classifed as: Personal Inter- est, Maintaining Norms, and Postconventional (Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, and Bebeau, 1999). The DIT-2 consists of fve dilemmas designed to elicit the evaluation of conficting values (for example, truth versus privacy). After In this era of increased accountability, it is important to consider how student affairs researches and assesses the outcomes of our efforts to increase moral competence. This chapter examines both qualitative and quantitative inquiry methods for measuring moral development.