Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of the Moral Injury Symptom Scale (MISS) in a Military Unit

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

Behavioral Sciences Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background and Aim: Working at different levels of the military may cause a person not to follow moral standards properly, so it is necessary to use efficient tools to detect the signs of moral injury. In this regard, the present study was conducted to investigate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the scale of moral injury symptoms in a military unit.
Methods: This study was a descriptive evaluation consisting of 402 soldiers of a military unit in Tehran in 2022-2023, who were selected by the available sampling method. Soldiers completed a demographic checklist, moral injury symptom scale (MISS), post-traumatic stress disorder scale (PTSD), and mental health scale (MHC-SF). The psychometric properties of the moral injury symptoms scale were analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis test and Cronbach's alpha coefficient in SPSS version 24 and R software version 4.1 at a significance level of 0.05.
Results: The content validity of the questionnaire items was found to be satisfactory in terms of quality. The factor analysis results indicated the existence of a ten-factor structure for the scale of moral injury symptoms. The RMSEA of the model was equal to 0.04 and the SRMR index was equal to 0.07, indicating the model's appropriateness. The calculated values of other indices (GFI, CFI, NFI, NNFI, and IFI) were 0.96, 0.98, 0.95, 0.98, and 0.97 respectively, which indicates the acceptability of the model. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was also 0.96.
Conclusion: The findings indicate the construct validity and acceptable validity of the moral injury symptoms scale in the military and the structure of this scale can be used to screen the moral injury symptoms in the military and soldiers.

Keywords

Journal of Military Medicine
Volume 25, Issue 4 - Serial Number 122
September and October 2023
Pages 1960-1972

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