Faculty of Science and Information Technology

Dr Miles Bore

• A longitudinal study of moral orientation stability in University of Newcastle BMed students. Started 1999 with final testing due in 2003.
• Prediction of small group effectiveness in First Year BMed students.
• Prediction of Social Work student success.
• I am currently working with Occupational Therapy and Medical Radiation Sciences in developing student selection criteria by surveying professionals working in these fields.

Current research in other institutions and samples includes the following:

• Approximately 800 applicants to six participating medical schools in Scotland and England have recently completed our mesures together with a battery of four personality tests. Results are expected to provide evidence of construct validity (in particular, correlations with Eysenck's personality dimension of Psychoticism). Scores will also be compared to academic and professional standards indicators over time.
• Utilising a grant obtained from the Sutton Trust in England by A/P David Powis (Newcastle) and Professor John Hamilton at Durham University, the measures have been configured as a web-based computer administered battery. Applicants to Durham's medical school are currently completing this on-line version of the tests as a pilot study. Additionally, the program is also collecting participant response latencies in order to test an experimental hypothesis derived from the findings of one of my PhD thesis studies.
• Discussions between Professor John Marley (PVC, Faculty of Health), Associate Professor David Powis and GPET (General Practitioners' Education and Training, funded by the Federal Department of Health) have resulted in the application of our measures in June this year as part of the GPET selection procedure of doctors to be trained as General Practitioners.

• Human Experimental and Applied Dynamics (HEAD) Research Group

• Member of the steering committee for the Clinical Unit of Ethics and Health Law (CUEHL).

• Course Coordinator for Pre-Professional Psychology
• Psychology of Morality and Ethics
• Lecturer in the Personality strand of PSYC2090
• Personality and Social Processes
  

• Honours Students Supervisor
  
  
• Agatha Conrad - PhD - Attitudes and Concerns about Computer Technology
• Kenneth Sutton - PhD - Assessing and Improving 3D Understanding

In 1997, a research team was established by the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, (now the Faculty of Health), for the purpose of developing valid psychometric measures of individual differences in ethical behaviour. I was invited to join the research team consisting of A/Professor David Powis and Dr Ian Kerridge (Medicine) and Dr Don Munro (Psychology). The focus of my work within the team ultimately resulted in my PhD thesis.

Thesis title: The psychology of morality: A Libertarian-Communitarian dimension and a dissonance model of moral decision making.

My PhD thesis research program involved:

• Critical analysis of the psychological (and to a lesser extent, the philosophical) literature on moral behaviour
• Critical analysis of measures of morality finding a significant psychometric flaw in the popular cognitive-developmental measures based on Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning
• The development and refinement of a model of moral decision making involving individual differences along a trait-like Libertarian (individual freedom values) versus Communitarian (social duty values) and Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance
• The development and refinement of an objective psychometric measure of the Libertarian-Communitarian dimension (the Mojac Scale)
• Experimental testing (10 studies) of the measure and model in terms of reliability and validity.

A total of 8,436 applicants to medical school, and students attending medical school, in Australia, Israel, New Zealand, and Fiji, plus a small number of psychology undergraduate students and medical clinicians from Australia, participated in the research program. The measure was found to have consistently high internal reliability and acceptable test/retest reliability. Correlational, factor analytical and qualitative analyses found support for the validity of the measure, and of the Libertarian-Communitarian dimension and the role of dissonance in moral decision making. The thesis was submitted in August 2001 and accepted without changes by each of the three examiners.