https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2589-5088
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Abstract
Character strengths have become a popular topic in personality research. A set of questionnaires has recently been developed as measures of character strengths: the VIA Inventory of Strengths-Revised, two 96-item short forms of that instrument, and two new measures called the Global Assessment of Character Strengths and Signature Strengths Survey. Collectively, these are referred to as the VIA Assessment Suite for Adults. Prior research has supported the reliability and validity of these measures. The current study extended those findings through a demographically stratified sample of 1,765 U.S. resident adults. Results indicated the scores were interchangeable across all three versions of the VIA-IS, irrespective of whether the items are all positively keyed or a mix of positive and negative items. In addition, the VIA-IS-R factor structure is also consistent with a previously identified three-factor model for the strengths. By freeing residual covariances, a model was developed for which adequate fit was replicable. This provided the foundation for demonstrating measurement invariance. The present study also explored differences in strengths across demographic categories and evaluated various approaches to identifying key (signature) strengths for the respondents. Recommendations on the use of the different instruments are provided.
Acknowledgments
Robert McGrath is a Senior Scientist for the VIA Institute, the copyright holder for the instruments examined in this manuscript. We are grateful to Francesca Bates and Alec Twibell for comments on a previous version of this article.
Notes
1 VIA originally stood for “Values in Action,” but is now an orphaned acronym.
2 Values could have been increased by using biserial correlations, but given the SSS items are used in practice as binary variables, point-biserial correlations were more appropriate.