Moral Foundations Questionnaire
MFQ-30Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.
A 30-item measure of the five moral foundations identified in Moral Foundations Theory: Care/Harm, Fairness/Reciprocity, Loyalty/Betrayal (Ingroup), Authority/Subversion (Respect), and Sanctity/Purity. The form uses two item types, relevance judgments (Part 1) and agreement with moral statements (Part 2), with three of each per foundation.
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Reliability & validation
Subscales
Response anchors
Not at all relevant / Strongly disagree · Not very relevant / Moderately disagree · Slightly relevant / Slightly disagree · Somewhat relevant / Slightly agree · Very relevant / Moderately agree · Extremely relevant / Strongly agree
Known limitations
Administer with two catch/validity items (one in each half) but exclude them from scoring; they are not included here. The five-factor structure has been debated; some analyses collapse the foundations into an Individualizing (Harm + Fairness) vs. Binding (Loyalty + Authority + Purity) dimension. The MFQ-30 is the most widely cited form; MFQ-2 (Atari et al., 2023) is the current successor with improved psychometrics.
Original citation
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366-385.
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021847Questions researchers ask
What does the MFQ-30 measure?
A 30-item measure of the five moral foundations identified in Moral Foundations Theory: Care/Harm, Fairness/Reciprocity, Loyalty/Betrayal (Ingroup), Authority/Subversion (Respect), and Sanctity/Purity. The form uses two item types, relevance judgments (Part 1) and agreement with moral statements (Part 2), with three of…
How many items does the MFQ-30 have?
The Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ-30) has 30 items across 5 subscales: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, Purity/Sanctity.
Is the MFQ-30 free to use?
The MFQ-30 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.
Is the MFQ-30 reliable?
Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.65–0.84. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.
Who developed the MFQ-30, and how do I cite it?
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366-385. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021847
Related scales
Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.