Journal of Youth and Adolescence, VoL 19, No. 6, 1990
Adolescents' Moral Dilemmas: The Context D. Kay Johnston, 1 Lyn Mikel Brown, 2 and Susan B. Christopherson 3 Received February 5, 1988; accepted July 25, 1990
The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology which outlines the kinds of real-life moral dilemmas adolescents spontaneously present in open-ended semiclinical interviews. A coding procedure is introduced which delineates three aspects of these moral dilemmas, "conflicts," "context," and "content," and an analysis is done of the category labeled "context." One hundred forty-eight adolescents from two school settings were interviewed. The results show that the majority of both boys and girls in these samples describe moral conflicts in the "context" of a relationship, particularly involving friends. However, boys are more likely than girls to focus on the "the self" as the "context" of the moral dilemma with no other relational context present and significantly more girls than boys focus on relationships rather than self
The authors thank the Dodge, Klingenstein and Kendall Foundations for funding these studies. ID. Kay Johnston is an Assistant Professor of Education at Colgate University. Her Ed.D. is from Harvard University, M.Ed. from Boston University, and A.B. from Ohio University. She was the Project Director for Carol Gilligan on a coed high-school study. Her present research interests are preservice teacher training and women's development. 2Lyn M. Brown is a Research Associate at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the Project Director of a longitudinal study of moral and social development in female children and adolescents and is the editor of A Guide to Reading Narratives of Moral Conflict and Choice for Self and Moral Fo&e. Her Ed.D. is from Harvard University and B.A. is from Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas. Her research focuses on a developmental analysis of narratives of relationship in girls. 3Susan B. Christopherson is a Doctoral Candidate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her B.A. is from Brown University and her research interests are in female development and children of alcoholics. 615
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INTRODUCTION Historically, researchers studying adolescent moral development have employed standard hypothetical dilemmas that place two moral values in opposition (Kohlberg, 1969; Selman, 1980). It has been observed, however, that when adolescents spontaneously formulate moral conflicts, they may produce dilemmas that are very different from those preconstructed for them by researchers. (Yussen, 1976). More recently Carol Gilligan and her colleagues (Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan and Attanucci, 1988, Gilligan et al., 1988) have described two moral orientations--care and justice. These two orientations have been identified in interview data with subjects who have been asked to discuss a moral conflict they have experienced in their lives. The open-ended, semiclinical interview (Brown et al., 1987; Gilligan et al., 1982) requires the interviewees to explore the conflict they faced, the way in which they resolved it, and their evaluation of the dilemma. This interview method differs from Yussen (1976), who asked adolescents to write a real-life moral dilemma and did not request that the dilemma be from the subjects' own lives. The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology which describes moral dilemmas that female and male adolescents spontaneously chose to talk about in these interviews. This methodology is important because it is a reliable coding method which identifies the dilemmas adolescents have and maintains the complexity of these real-life conflicts by locating these dilemmas in relationships. This paper is also written to address observations made by theorists (Lifton, 1985; Pratt, 1985; Walker, 1987) that little has been done to report or describe the content of real life moral dilemmas elicited by the Gilligan et al. interview. In the process of inductively constructing a content-coding procedure, it became clear that real-life dilemma data elicited by the Gilligan et al. interview were more complicated than a simple list of the conflicts that adolescents present (Yussen, 1976). As a result, this paper briefly addresses the distinction among "conflict," "context," and "content" in order to present the complexity of these adolescent's descriptions of moral conflict; however, our primary focus is on the "context" of the adolescents' real-life moral problems. We define the "conflict" of the moral dilemma as the problem the adolescent presents in his or her own words; i.e., "I had to decide whether or not to drink." The conflicts reported in these interviews were not different from those which Yussen's adolescents wrote. The adolescents in this sample were in conflict about such difficult choices as whether to drink, to take drugs, to lie, or how to tell friends or family members about issues that were difficult, or which school was best for them to attend.
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These "conflicts" were about issues that a n y o n e - p a r e n t , teacher, res e a r c h e r - w h o is familiar with adolescents would predict. However, as we looked at the conflicts more closely, we saw, like Piaget (1932/1965, p. 196), that these conflicts were embedded in relationships. These relationships influence how the adolescents report the conflict and what is at issue for them as they think about the dilemma. In our coding system, we call these relationships, "the context" of a moral dilemma. Thus, moral conflicts are experienced within the "context" of friend, acquaintances, or family. It is important to point out that there are occasions when people discuss conflicts in which no relationship is discernible, and the conflict focuses centrally on the self or on the self's desires or the self's standards when they are in conflict with social or institutional (such as school's) standards or rules. For the adolescents sampled here, this is the exception rather than the rule; yet the consequence of this finding in these data is a "context" category labeled self. Finally, we define the "context" as the central focus of the dilemma, as the narrator sees it. In other words, the "content" is what is most at stake for the adolescent as she/he makes the decision; what is most at risk of being lost or gained in the conflict. Therefore, the same "conflict" may have very different bottom-line "contents" for different people. For example, in a moral dilemma the "conflict" may be whether or not to drink. This "conflict" may be framed within the "context" of a relationship with parents or within the "context" of relationships with friends. Differing contexts raise different central concerns for these adolescents. Whether or not to drink framed within the "context" of parental relationship may elicit a central concern or "content" of upholding parental beliefs or standards which she/he may or may not partially subscribe to. This same c o n f l i c t - w h e t h e r or not to d r i n k - f r a m e d within the context of friendship may raise central concerns of loyalty to the friendship or fear of losing a relationship. Thus the "context" of the moral conflict becomes important in understanding the adolescent's view of her/his moral problem. Previous research presents the "conflict" but does not distinguish the "conflict," "context," and "content" of the moral dilemma (Yussen, 1976). We believe that distinguishing these three parts of a moral dilemma reveals the complexity of adolescents' thinking in their narration of real-life moral problems. In particular, highlighting the "context" in which conflicts occur is an important step in investigating adolescents' moral dilemmas, for in doing this we locate male and female adolescents in the relationships which both sustain and prove difficult for them. For this reason, while we point out issues of "conflict," and "content," the present study focuses on the "context" of the moral dilemmas adolescents in our sample present.
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METHOD Sample The sample consisted of 148 privileged adolescents from two private boarding schools in the Northeast. The real-life moral dilemma questions were part of an extensive interview designed to explore interviewees' perception of and choices about self, relationships, and morality. This sample combines the data from 61 girls at an all-girls' private boarding school and 87 (45 girls and 42 boys) from a coed private boarding school. The ages of the subjects ranged from 14 to 18. Subjects from each school were part of longitudinal studies and were interviewed once a year for 3 years. The present analysis includes only the first-year responses to the real-life dilemma questions.
Procedures
Coding for Conflict, Context, and Content A trained coder first read the entire moral dilemma presented in the interview transcript. She then used the interviewee's own words to formulate the "conflict." The coder noted which relationships were discussed in the dilemma and judged which relationship(s) was central to the formulation of the conflict, that is, what was the relational "context" of the dilemma. Coders used more than one category if the interviewee presented a dilemma in which more than one relationship figured centrally; in other words, the context could be either a single relationship or multiple relationships. Coding for the "content" of the dilemma was the most interpretive step in the coding process. The coder had to determine the central focus of the dilemma for the interviewee- What did the adolescent really perceive the conflict to be?
RESULTS T h e results of the present study focus on the " c o n t e x t " of the adolescents' real-life moral dilemmas. Table I presents the categories for "context" coding. Interrater reliability among three independent raters was 90% on 10% of the total number of cases. Table II shows the distribution of "contexts" described in the two samples and suggests a universe of "contexts" one might
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Table I. Contexts of Adolescents' Real-Life Moral Conflicts Self Focus of the conflict is on self; no other central person mentioned. Acquaintance(s) Familiar person; often not named or discussed impersonally, yet key to the conflict (e.g., a girl in the dorm, a neighbor who needs help). Friend(s) Identified as a friend, unqualified; male or female; often someone who shares the situation. Close, intimate friend Identifies as special or close friend (e.g., "best" friend); can include sexual friendship; often someone who shares feelings about the situation. Family Undifferentiated; does not distinguish particular family members. Parents May be briefly referred to separately but, in the main, are referred to as one unit; i.e., both are key to the conflict. Mother Mother clearly stands out as the central figure in the conflict, though both parents may be mentioned. Father Father stands out as central to the conflict. Siblings Brother(s) or sister(s) is key to the conflict; if in conjunction with mother and/or father, or other close relatives, check "family." Relative Members of the extended family, such as an aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent. If in conjunction with parents or siblings, check "family." It you have reason to believe relative is in role of close family member, i.e., grandparent plays role of mother in this situation, check "mother." School School as a context creates a conflict (e.g., conflict is with school rules or policy, and that is central to the conflict, as opposed to a particular other person). expect to find w h e n talking to a d o l e s c e n t s o f high-school age a b o u t m o r a l p r o b l e m s in their lives. T h e s e results s u p p o r t G i l l i g a n ' s (1982) o b s e r v a t i o n that w h e n p e o p l e are asked a b o u t m o r a l d i l e m m a s in their lives, t h e y d e s c r i b e t h e m largely in the c o n t e x t o f relationships. N i n e t y - o n e p e r c e n t o f t h e girls a n d 6 4 % of the boys p r o v i d e d a relational c o n t e x t for their m o r a l conflicts. A n a l y s i s o f t h e r e l a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e u s e o f the c o n t e x t "self" a n d g e n d e r w i t h i n t h e c o e d s a m p l e r e v e a l e d t h a t boys w e r e m o r e likely t h a n girls to focus o n t h e self (self's s t a n d a r d s , u p h o l d i n g beliefs, b e i n g t r u e to self), with n o o t h e r c e n t r a l r e l a t i o n a l c o n t e x t p r e s e n t in t h e i r m o r a l d i l e m mas. I n o t h e r words, significantly m o r e girls t h a n boys f o c u s e d o n r e l a t i o n a l c o n t e x t s (X 2 = 11.71, p < .001). T h i s analysis was d o n e b y c o l l a p s i n g relat i o n a l categories. T h i s association held with t h e a d d i t i o n o f t h e single-sex s a m p l e d a t a (X2 = 12.03, p < .001).
DISCUSSION This p a p e r has p r e s e n t e d t h e types o f m o r a l d i l e m m a s t h a t high schoolage a d o l e s c e n t s f r o m two private b o a r d i n g schools discuss in s e m i s t r u c t u r e d
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Johnston, Brown, and Christopherson Table II. The Distribution of Contexts Described for Coed and Single-Sex Private-School Samples by Gender Single-sex (all female) Self Acquaint. Friend(s) Close friend Family Parents Mother Father Siblings Relatives School Friend & mother Friend & parents Friend & family Friend & school Mother & sibling Parents & acquaint. Family & school Self & acquaint. Self & family Total
6 6 15 7 3 7 5 0 1 1 0 3 2 1 2 1 1 0 0 0 61
Coed Male Female 15 7 10 1 0 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 42
4 5 20 4 2 3 1 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 45
clinical interviews. We have discussed the importance of distinguishing the "context," or the relationships in which the dilemmas are embedded, and pointed out that there are typically three aspects of moral dilemmas, the "conflict," "context," and "content." These are terms that have not been distinguished or have been used interchangeably in previous research. As the results indicate, these high school-aged male and female adolescents described primarily moral conflicts in relationships, particularly in relationships with friends. However, a significantly larger number of boys (36%) focus on "self" as the main context of their dilemma, while only 9% of the girls use "self" as the "context" of the moral conflict. Although the boys in this sample mention self outside the context of relationships more often than girls, they do frequently talk about relationships. They, like the girls, talk mostly of friends. It is interesting to note, however, that the girls distinguish clearly between close friends or "best" friends and casual friends, while the boys rarely make this distinction. Girls also discuss conflicts in which their mother or father is mentioned as a specific person as frequently as they mention "parents" as a general category. The boys in this sample did not make this distinction, always referring to "parents" in general. These findings corroborate Gilligan's observations (1982, 1987) that girls are more attentive to the particularities of relationship and make
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qualitative distinctions based on the nature of the specific relationship more often than do boys. We note an interesting trend when comparing "contexts" generated by females at a single-sex school with females at a coed school. Although numbers are small and no significant relationship can be established, girls in the coed boarding school are more likely to present dilemmas in which relationships with fathers were central to their conflict, while girls in the single-sex boarding school more often presented relationships with mothers as central to the moral conflict. Finally, the number of relationships adolescents mention in the "context" of their dilemmas differs depending on school. As previously mentioned, a c o d e r may select more than one "context" if isolating one relationship would not capture the complexity of the interviewee's construction of the dilemma. Coding the context of the moral conflict for students from the coed sample tended to be fairly straightforward. These students focused on a dilemma or person around which their conflict resolved. However, the students in the single-sex school tend to cite many issues and people as crucial in their dilemma. While this difference may be due to interviewer variation, it may also suggest a question for further investigation. Are there differential effects of coed versus single-sex environments on adolescent girls' constructions of moral dilemmas? Does the school milieu, i.e., its philosophy of teaching, support networks, and the school structure lead to different understandings or constructions of moral conflicts? As institutions, do the single-sex and coed schools attend to moral conflicts differently? In summary, the use of the Gilligan et al. interview method yields data which illuminate the complex relationships in adolescents' experiences of moral dilemmas. The coding method presented here is a reliable way to document this.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We wish to thank Carol Gilligan, who was the principal investigator on these studies, and Nona Lyons, who directed the single-sex study.
REFERENCES Brown, L., Argyris, D., Attanucci, J., Bardige, B., Gilligan, C., Johnston, D. K., Miller, B., Osborne, R., Ward, J., Wiggins, G., and Wilcox,D. (1987).A Guide to Reading NaiTatives of Moral Choice for Self and Moral Orientation, Monograph 1, GEHD Study Center, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA.
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Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Gilligan, C. (1987). Adolescent development reconsidered. In Irwin, C. E., Jr., (ed.), Adolescent Social Behavior and Health, New Directions in Child Development, No. 37, Jossey Bass, San Francisco. Gilligan, C., and Attanucci, J. (1988). Two moral orientations. Merrill Palmer Q. 34: 223-237. GiUigan, C., Langdale, S., Lyons, N., and Murphy, J. M. (1982). The Contribution of Women's Thought to Developmental Theory: The Elimination of Sex Bias in Moral Development Research and Education, Final Report to the National Institute of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Gilligan, C., Ward, J., and Taylor, J. (eds.) (1988). Mapping the Moral Domain, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: Cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In Goslin, D. (ed.), Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, Rand McNally, Chicago. Lifton, P. (1985). Gender differences and moral development: Fact or fiction? J. Personal. Special Issue. Piaget, J. (1932/1965). The Moral Judgment of the Child, Free Press, New York. Pratt, M. W. (1985). Sex differences in moral orientations in personal and hypothetical dilemmas? Don't forget those old outcasts of content and process. Paper presented at the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles. Selman, R. (1980). The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding: Development and Clinical Analysis, Academic Press, New York. Walker, L., de Vries, B., and Trevethan, S. (1987). Moral stages and moral orientations in real-life and hypothetical dilemmas. Child Dev. 58: 842-858. Yussen, S. (1976). Characteristics of moral dilemmas written by adolescents. Dev. Psychol. 13: 162-163.
Adolescents' Moral Dilemmas: The Context D. Kay Johnston, 1 Lyn Mikel Brown, 2 and Susan B. Christopherson 3 Received February 5, 1988; accepted July 25, 1990
The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology which outlines the kinds of real-life moral dilemmas adolescents spontaneously present in open-ended semiclinical interviews. A coding procedure is introduced which delineates three aspects of these moral dilemmas, "conflicts," "context," and "content," and an analysis is done of the category labeled "context." One hundred forty-eight adolescents from two school settings were interviewed. The results show that the majority of both boys and girls in these samples describe moral conflicts in the "context" of a relationship, particularly involving friends. However, boys are more likely than girls to focus on the "the self" as the "context" of the moral dilemma with no other relational context present and significantly more girls than boys focus on relationships rather than self
The authors thank the Dodge, Klingenstein and Kendall Foundations for funding these studies. ID. Kay Johnston is an Assistant Professor of Education at Colgate University. Her Ed.D. is from Harvard University, M.Ed. from Boston University, and A.B. from Ohio University. She was the Project Director for Carol Gilligan on a coed high-school study. Her present research interests are preservice teacher training and women's development. 2Lyn M. Brown is a Research Associate at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the Project Director of a longitudinal study of moral and social development in female children and adolescents and is the editor of A Guide to Reading Narratives of Moral Conflict and Choice for Self and Moral Fo&e. Her Ed.D. is from Harvard University and B.A. is from Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas. Her research focuses on a developmental analysis of narratives of relationship in girls. 3Susan B. Christopherson is a Doctoral Candidate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her B.A. is from Brown University and her research interests are in female development and children of alcoholics. 615
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INTRODUCTION Historically, researchers studying adolescent moral development have employed standard hypothetical dilemmas that place two moral values in opposition (Kohlberg, 1969; Selman, 1980). It has been observed, however, that when adolescents spontaneously formulate moral conflicts, they may produce dilemmas that are very different from those preconstructed for them by researchers. (Yussen, 1976). More recently Carol Gilligan and her colleagues (Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan and Attanucci, 1988, Gilligan et al., 1988) have described two moral orientations--care and justice. These two orientations have been identified in interview data with subjects who have been asked to discuss a moral conflict they have experienced in their lives. The open-ended, semiclinical interview (Brown et al., 1987; Gilligan et al., 1982) requires the interviewees to explore the conflict they faced, the way in which they resolved it, and their evaluation of the dilemma. This interview method differs from Yussen (1976), who asked adolescents to write a real-life moral dilemma and did not request that the dilemma be from the subjects' own lives. The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology which describes moral dilemmas that female and male adolescents spontaneously chose to talk about in these interviews. This methodology is important because it is a reliable coding method which identifies the dilemmas adolescents have and maintains the complexity of these real-life conflicts by locating these dilemmas in relationships. This paper is also written to address observations made by theorists (Lifton, 1985; Pratt, 1985; Walker, 1987) that little has been done to report or describe the content of real life moral dilemmas elicited by the Gilligan et al. interview. In the process of inductively constructing a content-coding procedure, it became clear that real-life dilemma data elicited by the Gilligan et al. interview were more complicated than a simple list of the conflicts that adolescents present (Yussen, 1976). As a result, this paper briefly addresses the distinction among "conflict," "context," and "content" in order to present the complexity of these adolescent's descriptions of moral conflict; however, our primary focus is on the "context" of the adolescents' real-life moral problems. We define the "conflict" of the moral dilemma as the problem the adolescent presents in his or her own words; i.e., "I had to decide whether or not to drink." The conflicts reported in these interviews were not different from those which Yussen's adolescents wrote. The adolescents in this sample were in conflict about such difficult choices as whether to drink, to take drugs, to lie, or how to tell friends or family members about issues that were difficult, or which school was best for them to attend.
Adolescents' D i l e m m a s
617
These "conflicts" were about issues that a n y o n e - p a r e n t , teacher, res e a r c h e r - w h o is familiar with adolescents would predict. However, as we looked at the conflicts more closely, we saw, like Piaget (1932/1965, p. 196), that these conflicts were embedded in relationships. These relationships influence how the adolescents report the conflict and what is at issue for them as they think about the dilemma. In our coding system, we call these relationships, "the context" of a moral dilemma. Thus, moral conflicts are experienced within the "context" of friend, acquaintances, or family. It is important to point out that there are occasions when people discuss conflicts in which no relationship is discernible, and the conflict focuses centrally on the self or on the self's desires or the self's standards when they are in conflict with social or institutional (such as school's) standards or rules. For the adolescents sampled here, this is the exception rather than the rule; yet the consequence of this finding in these data is a "context" category labeled self. Finally, we define the "context" as the central focus of the dilemma, as the narrator sees it. In other words, the "content" is what is most at stake for the adolescent as she/he makes the decision; what is most at risk of being lost or gained in the conflict. Therefore, the same "conflict" may have very different bottom-line "contents" for different people. For example, in a moral dilemma the "conflict" may be whether or not to drink. This "conflict" may be framed within the "context" of a relationship with parents or within the "context" of relationships with friends. Differing contexts raise different central concerns for these adolescents. Whether or not to drink framed within the "context" of parental relationship may elicit a central concern or "content" of upholding parental beliefs or standards which she/he may or may not partially subscribe to. This same c o n f l i c t - w h e t h e r or not to d r i n k - f r a m e d within the context of friendship may raise central concerns of loyalty to the friendship or fear of losing a relationship. Thus the "context" of the moral conflict becomes important in understanding the adolescent's view of her/his moral problem. Previous research presents the "conflict" but does not distinguish the "conflict," "context," and "content" of the moral dilemma (Yussen, 1976). We believe that distinguishing these three parts of a moral dilemma reveals the complexity of adolescents' thinking in their narration of real-life moral problems. In particular, highlighting the "context" in which conflicts occur is an important step in investigating adolescents' moral dilemmas, for in doing this we locate male and female adolescents in the relationships which both sustain and prove difficult for them. For this reason, while we point out issues of "conflict," and "content," the present study focuses on the "context" of the moral dilemmas adolescents in our sample present.
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METHOD Sample The sample consisted of 148 privileged adolescents from two private boarding schools in the Northeast. The real-life moral dilemma questions were part of an extensive interview designed to explore interviewees' perception of and choices about self, relationships, and morality. This sample combines the data from 61 girls at an all-girls' private boarding school and 87 (45 girls and 42 boys) from a coed private boarding school. The ages of the subjects ranged from 14 to 18. Subjects from each school were part of longitudinal studies and were interviewed once a year for 3 years. The present analysis includes only the first-year responses to the real-life dilemma questions.
Procedures
Coding for Conflict, Context, and Content A trained coder first read the entire moral dilemma presented in the interview transcript. She then used the interviewee's own words to formulate the "conflict." The coder noted which relationships were discussed in the dilemma and judged which relationship(s) was central to the formulation of the conflict, that is, what was the relational "context" of the dilemma. Coders used more than one category if the interviewee presented a dilemma in which more than one relationship figured centrally; in other words, the context could be either a single relationship or multiple relationships. Coding for the "content" of the dilemma was the most interpretive step in the coding process. The coder had to determine the central focus of the dilemma for the interviewee- What did the adolescent really perceive the conflict to be?
RESULTS T h e results of the present study focus on the " c o n t e x t " of the adolescents' real-life moral dilemmas. Table I presents the categories for "context" coding. Interrater reliability among three independent raters was 90% on 10% of the total number of cases. Table II shows the distribution of "contexts" described in the two samples and suggests a universe of "contexts" one might
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Table I. Contexts of Adolescents' Real-Life Moral Conflicts Self Focus of the conflict is on self; no other central person mentioned. Acquaintance(s) Familiar person; often not named or discussed impersonally, yet key to the conflict (e.g., a girl in the dorm, a neighbor who needs help). Friend(s) Identified as a friend, unqualified; male or female; often someone who shares the situation. Close, intimate friend Identifies as special or close friend (e.g., "best" friend); can include sexual friendship; often someone who shares feelings about the situation. Family Undifferentiated; does not distinguish particular family members. Parents May be briefly referred to separately but, in the main, are referred to as one unit; i.e., both are key to the conflict. Mother Mother clearly stands out as the central figure in the conflict, though both parents may be mentioned. Father Father stands out as central to the conflict. Siblings Brother(s) or sister(s) is key to the conflict; if in conjunction with mother and/or father, or other close relatives, check "family." Relative Members of the extended family, such as an aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent. If in conjunction with parents or siblings, check "family." It you have reason to believe relative is in role of close family member, i.e., grandparent plays role of mother in this situation, check "mother." School School as a context creates a conflict (e.g., conflict is with school rules or policy, and that is central to the conflict, as opposed to a particular other person). expect to find w h e n talking to a d o l e s c e n t s o f high-school age a b o u t m o r a l p r o b l e m s in their lives. T h e s e results s u p p o r t G i l l i g a n ' s (1982) o b s e r v a t i o n that w h e n p e o p l e are asked a b o u t m o r a l d i l e m m a s in their lives, t h e y d e s c r i b e t h e m largely in the c o n t e x t o f relationships. N i n e t y - o n e p e r c e n t o f t h e girls a n d 6 4 % of the boys p r o v i d e d a relational c o n t e x t for their m o r a l conflicts. A n a l y s i s o f t h e r e l a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e u s e o f the c o n t e x t "self" a n d g e n d e r w i t h i n t h e c o e d s a m p l e r e v e a l e d t h a t boys w e r e m o r e likely t h a n girls to focus o n t h e self (self's s t a n d a r d s , u p h o l d i n g beliefs, b e i n g t r u e to self), with n o o t h e r c e n t r a l r e l a t i o n a l c o n t e x t p r e s e n t in t h e i r m o r a l d i l e m mas. I n o t h e r words, significantly m o r e girls t h a n boys f o c u s e d o n r e l a t i o n a l c o n t e x t s (X 2 = 11.71, p < .001). T h i s analysis was d o n e b y c o l l a p s i n g relat i o n a l categories. T h i s association held with t h e a d d i t i o n o f t h e single-sex s a m p l e d a t a (X2 = 12.03, p < .001).
DISCUSSION This p a p e r has p r e s e n t e d t h e types o f m o r a l d i l e m m a s t h a t high schoolage a d o l e s c e n t s f r o m two private b o a r d i n g schools discuss in s e m i s t r u c t u r e d
620
Johnston, Brown, and Christopherson Table II. The Distribution of Contexts Described for Coed and Single-Sex Private-School Samples by Gender Single-sex (all female) Self Acquaint. Friend(s) Close friend Family Parents Mother Father Siblings Relatives School Friend & mother Friend & parents Friend & family Friend & school Mother & sibling Parents & acquaint. Family & school Self & acquaint. Self & family Total
6 6 15 7 3 7 5 0 1 1 0 3 2 1 2 1 1 0 0 0 61
Coed Male Female 15 7 10 1 0 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 42
4 5 20 4 2 3 1 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 45
clinical interviews. We have discussed the importance of distinguishing the "context," or the relationships in which the dilemmas are embedded, and pointed out that there are typically three aspects of moral dilemmas, the "conflict," "context," and "content." These are terms that have not been distinguished or have been used interchangeably in previous research. As the results indicate, these high school-aged male and female adolescents described primarily moral conflicts in relationships, particularly in relationships with friends. However, a significantly larger number of boys (36%) focus on "self" as the main context of their dilemma, while only 9% of the girls use "self" as the "context" of the moral conflict. Although the boys in this sample mention self outside the context of relationships more often than girls, they do frequently talk about relationships. They, like the girls, talk mostly of friends. It is interesting to note, however, that the girls distinguish clearly between close friends or "best" friends and casual friends, while the boys rarely make this distinction. Girls also discuss conflicts in which their mother or father is mentioned as a specific person as frequently as they mention "parents" as a general category. The boys in this sample did not make this distinction, always referring to "parents" in general. These findings corroborate Gilligan's observations (1982, 1987) that girls are more attentive to the particularities of relationship and make
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qualitative distinctions based on the nature of the specific relationship more often than do boys. We note an interesting trend when comparing "contexts" generated by females at a single-sex school with females at a coed school. Although numbers are small and no significant relationship can be established, girls in the coed boarding school are more likely to present dilemmas in which relationships with fathers were central to their conflict, while girls in the single-sex boarding school more often presented relationships with mothers as central to the moral conflict. Finally, the number of relationships adolescents mention in the "context" of their dilemmas differs depending on school. As previously mentioned, a c o d e r may select more than one "context" if isolating one relationship would not capture the complexity of the interviewee's construction of the dilemma. Coding the context of the moral conflict for students from the coed sample tended to be fairly straightforward. These students focused on a dilemma or person around which their conflict resolved. However, the students in the single-sex school tend to cite many issues and people as crucial in their dilemma. While this difference may be due to interviewer variation, it may also suggest a question for further investigation. Are there differential effects of coed versus single-sex environments on adolescent girls' constructions of moral dilemmas? Does the school milieu, i.e., its philosophy of teaching, support networks, and the school structure lead to different understandings or constructions of moral conflicts? As institutions, do the single-sex and coed schools attend to moral conflicts differently? In summary, the use of the Gilligan et al. interview method yields data which illuminate the complex relationships in adolescents' experiences of moral dilemmas. The coding method presented here is a reliable way to document this.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We wish to thank Carol Gilligan, who was the principal investigator on these studies, and Nona Lyons, who directed the single-sex study.
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