Measures of morally injurious experiences: A quantitative comparison

•Potentially morally injurious experiences are correlated with a range of negative psychosocial variables in military veterans.•Two measures of potentially morally injurious experiences, the Moral Injury Questionnaire-Military and the Moral Injury Events Scale, similarly predicted negative functioning in military service members.•The measures did not differ in their relationship with combat exposure.•Items which focused on appraisals of these experiences most strongly predicted psychological functioning. A recent body of literature has examined the psychological effects of perpetrating or failing to prevent acts that violate one's sense of right and wrong. The objective of this study was to examine and compare correlations between the two most widely used instruments measuring this construct in a sample of military veterans and relevant psychosocial variables. Individuals (N = 182) who reported military combat experience completed the Moral Injury Events Scale and the Moral Injury Questionnaire-Military Version, along with measures of combat exposure, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, alcohol concerns, anger, guilt, and shame. Results indicate similar correlations between the morally injurious experiences instruments and negative psychosocial variables, but different correlations with combat exposure. Implications for further research in the conceptualization and treatment of morally injurious experiences are discussed.