Measuring Folk Metaethical Perceptions: the Possibilities and Limitations of Survey Methods

Study is devoted to one of the ways of measuring folk metaethical concepts The focus of meta-ethics is the ontology and epistemology of moral facts and properties, and the above-described studies investigate how ordinary people view ethical norms. The purpose of the work is to measure the reliability and internal validity of moral relativism and objectivism scale and provide insights to ways of measuring folk metaethics. Several stages were conducted during the research. Firstly, the theoretical background was developed. Metaethical theories were analyzed and classified, so two concepts were chosen for further interpretation and operationalization - objectivism and relativism. The scope of previous research in folk metaethics was examined to find best practices and instruments. Folk metaethical perceptions became the research object of sociological research, so it was made an overview of the main traditions in sociology of morality and possibilities of implication folk metaethics in sociological research. Scale of folk moral objectivism and relativism were developed, based on previous studies, expert interview with specialist in metaethics and pilot approbation of the questionnaire. Final scales turned out to have good quality of reliability-consistency and construct validity. It was found out that latent structure of the scale implies 3 components: folk moral relativism, folk moral universalism and folk moral minimal objectivism. The study contributes to the development of new hypotheses and deeper research of folk metaethics.