Role of Female Students’ Self-Regulation in Predicting Moral Identity: A Structural Equation Modeling Study

Abstract

<strong>Background:</strong> Considering the significance of morality and the need to understand its determinants, as well as the growing tendency toward dealing with psychological variables as latent variables as they are in the real world, it is not surprising that in the moral psychology area, classical statistical methods are being replaced by new psychological methods to take an effective step to raise the knowledge in this area. <strong>Objectives:</strong> The aim of this study was to propose a structural equation model to investigate the predicting role of female students' self-regulation in moral identity as latent variables. <strong>Methods:</strong> The sample of this study included 361 female students of the University of Mazandaran in the 2017 - 2018 academic year selected through stratified random sampling. The participants completed the short version of the Self-Regulation Inventory and the Moral Identity Questionnaire. The obtained data were analyzed by SPSS (v.24) and AMOS (v. 24) using structural equation modeling. <strong>Results:</strong> After confirming the validity of the scales used to explain the latent variables, i.e. self-regulation and moral identity, it was observed that female students' self-regulation was a significant predictor of moral identity (β = 0.69, P < 0.001). <strong>Conclusions:</strong> According to the study, increasing self-regulation in female students is accompanied by increasing their moral identity.