Moral injury in health workers, emergency services, police, government officials, and teachers: Measurement invariance of the Occupational Moral Injury Scale (OMIS) and group comparisons.

Abstract

Objective: The Occupational Moral Injury Scale (OMIS) was designed to capture both morally injurious events and a general factor of moral injury symptoms in any occupational setting beyond the military. Although the initial development and refinement of the OMIS demonstrated excellent results, it was undertaken on a combined sample of high-risk occupations. Further research is required to establish the OMIS as a measurement invariant instrument separately in specific occupations.

Method: This study ran bifactor multigroup confirmatory factor analyses on a sample of 1,431 participants from five separate, high-risk occupational groups (health workers, emergency services, police, government officials, and teachers) before making direct mean comparisons between groups.

Results: The results demonstrated configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the OMIS across all occupational groups tested, as well as between men and women-indicating that items hold generally the same meaning across these groups and that their scores can be appropriately compared. The OMIS was also able to distinguish between occupational groups, according to mean score comparisons.

Conclusions: These results validate the OMIS for use across occupational groups and genders, facilitating further research in this space and permitting direct comparisons between diverse occupational groups for the first time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).