The Role of Moral Intelligence in Predicting the Academic Ethics of Farhangian University Students with the Mediating Role of Spiritual Intelligence

Investigating factors affecting academic ethics is of interest to researchers in this field. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the relationship between moral intelligence and academic ethics with the mediating role of spiritual intelligence.

Methods and Materials: 

The research was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population, was all the students of Farhangian University of South-Khorasan in the Academic year of 2022-2023, in the number of 2612 people, with the random sampling method and based on the table of Krejcie & Morgan, 336 people, King’s spiritual intelligence questionnaires (2008), ethical intelligence of Lennick & Kiel (2005) and academic ethics of GolParvar (2014). Pearson’s correlation coefficient test and structural equation approach and SPSS-26 and SmartPLS-3 software were used for data analysis.

Investigations show that all coefficients of the direct path related to the relationship between moral intelligence and spiritual intelligence and academic ethics of students are positive and significant (p<0.01). The results showed that the relationship model between spiritual intelligence and academic ethics is positive and significant (p<0.05). The results show that the path coefficient of the indirect relationship between moral intelligence and academic ethics, through the mediating variable of spiritual intelligence, is significant at the alpha level of 0.01 (p<0.05). Overall, obtaining the 0.688 value for GOF shows the overall fit of the research model.

The research results, while pointing to the key role of spiritual and moral intelligence in students’ academic ethics, point out the necessity of the aforementioned variables to the administrators of the higher education system.