Validation of the Toronto Moral Injury Scale for Journalists

Little has been written about moral injury in journalists notwithstanding emerging data suggesting that it is present and associated with work-related activities. One of the factors hindering research in the area is the lack of a self-report psychometric scale developed specifically for detecting moral injury in journalists. To address this, we set out to develop a self-report psychometric scale for detecting moral injury in journalists. Three focus groups were run with a total of 39 journalists from which qualitative and quantitative analyses generated 15 potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs). Thereafter, 159 journalists completed various psychometric scales including the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), and the 15 PMIEs items. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis were undertaken on the PMIEs items after they were first checked for between-item correlations and language redundancies. Based on the EFA, a three-factor confirmatory factor analysis model was fitted for the PMIEs items. Overall fit indices for the three-factor model indicated a good-to-excellent fit. The nine items retained from the EFA had an average of 18 observations per item, strong internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha = .86), and good convergent validity, correlating significantly with the PCL-5: r = .40, BAI: r = .31, and BDI-II: r = .36 (p < .001 for all). Our study provides robust evidence for the conceptual soundness and psychometric validity of the Toronto Moral Injury Scale for Journalists.