The Development and Verification for Reliability and Validity of a Japanese Version of Greene et al.'s Moral Dilemma Questionnaire

Abstract Background: A difference exists in people's judgements between the switch case and pedestrian bridge case of the trolley problem, which is explained by the concept of personalness or directness. The moral dilemma task questionnaire developed by Greene, which comprises personal and impersonal moral dilemmas, is useful for clarifying people's moral judgements. However, the validity of Green’s questionnaire was not validated. We developed and validated a Japanese version of this questionnaire. Methods and Results: Ten new questions were added to the Japanese version using double translation and its internal validity was tested. A second survey was conducted on the same participants one month after the first survey (n=231). The intraclass correlation coefficient by retest was found to be 0.781. Conclusion: Reproducibility, internal consistency, and criterion-related validity were confirmed by retesting the Japanese version of the moral dilemma task by Greene et al. The current study proved the reliability of the original version.