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Abstract
The VIA Inventory of Strengths is an extremely popular index of the 24 character strengths that comprise the VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues. The inventory has recently been extensively revised. The current study sought to evaluate the reliability and validity of the revised VIA Inventory, including newly developed short forms and scales measuring the virtue component of the VIA Classification. This study used two samples of adults, one comprised of 743 individuals recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and another of 631 individuals who accessed the VIA Institute of Character website to complete an earlier version of the VIA Inventory. Participants completed the new version of the inventory as well as a measure of related behaviors. The current study examines internal consistency, factor structure, test-retest reliability, criterion-related validity, convergent and discriminant validity, and item discrimination statistics. The results suggest the inventory generally meets psychometric standards for a measure of the targeted character strengths and virtues.
Notes
1 Scales were not developed to reflect the complete factor structure of the VIA-IS because (1) the higher-level constructs introduced by Peterson and Seligman (Citation2004) have been primarily of interest because of their connection to virtue theory; and (2) unlike the three-factor structure, the 4-5 factor structure has not proven particularly reliable across the wide variety of populations tested in the factor analytic studies, so the “true” factor structure remains debatable. In fact, results reported below indicate that structure may not apply to the VIA-IS-R.
2 Because the short form scales include as few as four items, the default assumption of three factors used in the computation of omega total in some cases needed to be changed to two.