Abstract
Background
Traditional moral disengagement is observed in daily life. However, as the time spent in virtual environments increases, it is important to investigate online moral disengagement. This study aimed to adapt the Online Moral Disengagement Scale to the Turkish population and examine the relationships among online moral disengagement, empathic tendency, and cyberbullying.
Methods
The study participants (58.2% females [n = 404], 41.8% males [n = 290]) consisted of 694 adolescent volunteers. The data were collected using the Online Moral Disengagement Scale, Cyber Bullying Scale, and Adolescent KA-Sİ Empathic Tendency Scale. The study was conducted in several stages: confirmatory factor analysis, item factor loading, item-total correlation, concurrent analysis, mediating analysis, and reliability analysis.
Results
The eight-item structure of the scale was confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis. The study revealed significant relationships between online moral disengagement, cyberbullying, and empathic tendency. Online moral disengagement was found to mediate the relationship between empathic tendency and cyberbullying.
Conclusion
The scale's reliability values were good, and all the results indicated that the Turkish version of the moral disengagement scale was valid and reliable.