Psychosocial Correlates of Moral Disengagement among In-School Adolescents in Ibadan, Nigeria: Evidence from Parenting, Peer Pressure, and Self-Esteem (Published)
Moral disengagement enables adolescents to rationalise transgressive conduct without self-censure, yet its psychosocial correlates remain under-studied in Sub-Saharan African school settings. This cross-sectional study examined parenting, peer pressure, and self-esteem as correlates of moral disengagement among 288 in-school adolescents aged 12–20 years from six secondary schools in Ibadan, Nigeria. Participants completed the Moral Disengagement Scale, Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ), a 30-item peer-pressure measure, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Parenting responses were scored according to the PSDQ’s intended authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive subscales. All three parenting scores correlated positively with moral disengagement (rs = .22–.39, ps < .001), as did peer pressure (r = .19, p = .001), whereas self-esteem was unrelated at the bivariate level. The predictors jointly explained 24.3% of the variance in moral disengagement (adjusted R² = .229). In the multivariate model, authoritative-labelled (β = .44), authoritarian-labelled (β = .23), permissive-labelled (β = −.18), and self-esteem (β = −.23) scores made significant unique contributions, whereas peer pressure did not. HC3 robust estimation, 5,000-resample bootstrapping, influence diagnostics, and repeated split-half analyses confirmed the stability of this coefficient pattern. However, exploratory factor analysis failed to recover the intended parenting structure, and confirmatory factor analysis showed poor fit for both the theoretical three-factor model (CFI = .29, RMSEA = .20) and a one-factor alternative. Thus, although parenting responses were robustly associated with moral disengagement, the specific PSDQ subscale coefficients cannot confidently be interpreted as distinct parenting styles. Findings highlight the importance of culturally validated parenting measures and of examining family, peer, and individual correlates jointly in research on adolescent moral development.
Keywords: Parenting style, Peer Pressure, in-school adolescents; Nigeria, moral disengagement, self-esteem