The Illusion of Moral Decline
nature.com
nature.com
When people speak of moral decline, it's usually focused on moral standards. Someone with 1950s moral standards would find what's acceptable in 2023 a huge moral decline. Someone with 1880s moral standards will probably have felt the same for 1930. And ancient romans would probably think 1880 too "square". This is not about specific criminal behavior (like the "have you been mugged"), but different moral concerns.
An 1950s or an old West person would find most of current acceptable moral standards adhorent for example (things like etiquette, attitudes to sex, how young people speak to their elders, going to church, dressing appropriately, abortion, how kids behave at school, what is allowed to be mass broadcast, etc), even if in their society violent murder was many times more prevalent, or they still had some practice we find bad today.
They include both questions like "Now here are some statements which represent some traditional American values... The state of morality in this country is bad and getting worse." and similar "morals and ethics" questions, as well as questions about gun violence and the like. They're lumping them both together.
They say (in the study) that the questions asked about specific things show there has been no actual change, but the questions about "day to day morality" (of which I actually only see a question about people being willing to help each other) could easily be drowned out by the rest of the questions if they showed change.
It's almost like no one remembered the basic rule of statistical analysis - double check (think twice) that the data measured is actually a reflection of the phenomenon you want to measure.