Preferred Name
Yelisey Alexandrovich Shapovalov
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6138-2848
Date of Graduation
5-9-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of Graduate Psychology
Advisor(s)
John D. Hathcoat
Christian Early
Keston Fulcher
Cara Meixner
Abstract
The Ethical Reasoning in Action program leveraged program assessment data to further promote student learning based on their effective educational framework for ethical reasoning: The Eight Key Question (8KQ) strategy. A cross-disciplinary team of five core researchers launched the first constructivist qualitative inquiry into students’ ethical reasoning process. The purpose was to comparatively describe essays of Low and High performing students. The basic qualitative design evolved over 19 months to create the 8KQ Codebook through an emergent, iterative, and conceptually sensitizing process. The 8KQ Codebook synthesized structural coding with a mix of theory-driven and data-driven codes across six research questions: (1) What situations did students perceive as ethical dilemmas? (2) Where did students encounter ethical dilemmas? (3) What decisions/choices did students consider? (4) Which Key Questions did students mention, apply, and analyze? (5) How did students engage the situation? (6) How did students reflect on their ethical reasoning process? After a pilot study, four core researchers and nine experienced volunteers coded 179 Low and 35 High performing essays. Coding was completed in a two-day administration featuring training, independent coding, and debriefing to contextualize results and codebook finalization. Participant feedback was overwhelmingly positive and supported overall findings that the 8KQ Codebook adequately represented students’ ethical reasoning process. Inter-coder agreement estimates indicated strong dependability for most research questions. Only a few essays manifested unique responses, suggesting a well-saturated codebook. Insightful similarities and differences emerged between Low and High performing essays. Some highlights include: (a) most students engaged to resolve the dilemma, but High performing students also analyzed one to four KQs; (b) both High and Low performers relied on Outcomes and Empathy and infrequently used Liberty and Rights when discussing dilemmas; and (c) Low performers used more limited decision options, such as only considering personal ramifications or mostly addressing one side of a dilemma. Methodological implications for the qualitative inquiry of assessment data were discussed. Specific revisions were recommended for the codebook, such as creating new codes, clarifying existing codes, and reinforcing aspects of training. Future research should investigate a newly constructed model for moral development based on the 8KQ strategy.
Recommended Citation
Shapovalov, Yelisey, "A qualitative lens for exploring ethical reasoning: Developing the 8 Key Question Codebook" (2024). Dissertations, 2020-current. 141.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss202029/141
