Moral reasoning in adolescent offenders: A meta-analytic review.

espanolAntecedentes: el estudio de la asociacion entre razonamiento moral y diversos comportamientos ha ocupado numerosos estudios en Psicologia. Especifi camente, el razonamiento moral ha sido ampliamente relacionado con la delincuencia juvenil a lo largo de dichas investigaciones. Objetivos: este estudio pretende integrar mas de 70 anos de produccion cientifi ca acerca de la busqueda de sus iguales no infractores en razonamiento moral entre menores infractores y teniendo en cuenta el posible poder moderador tanto de variables demografi cas como metodologicas. Metodo: se lleva a cabo una revision meta-analitica cuya poblacion objetivo fue menores infractores entre 11 y 20 anos. Resultados: se obtuvo una muestra de 72 estudios, obteniendo un tamano de efecto moderado de r= -.336. Se observa que los tamanos de efecto para los subgrupos que conforman las variables moderadoras son signifi cativos. Conclusion: este resultado sugiere que la relacion entre razonamiento moral y delincuencia juvenil es potente y no solo atribuible a caracteristicas metodologicas o sociodemografi cas de la muestra. Se fi naliza con una refl exion sobre algunos retos pendientes en este campo EnglishBackground: Moral reasoning and its association with various types of behavior have been the subject of many studies in Psychology. Specifi cally, moral reasoning has been widely related to juvenile delinquency in the research about the subject. Objectives: this review integrates more than 70 years of scientifi c research into the differences in moral reasoning between adolescent offenders and non-offenders with a view to elucidating the relationship between moral reasoning and juvenile delinquency with provision for the potential moderating effect of demographic and methodological variables. Method: We conducted a meta-analytic review whose target population was young offenders between 11 and 20 years old. Results: A search for literature on the target topic retrieved a total of 72 studies with a moderated effect size (r = -.336). The most salient fi nding was that effect sizes were signifi cant for all subgroups of moderating variables. Conclusions: This result suggests a powerful relationship between moral reasoning and offi cially recorded juvenile delinquency that cannot be exclusively ascribed to sociodemographic or methodological variables. There remain some unsolved challenges in this fi eld, however, which are briefl y commented on