Abstract
Although research on character strengths has flourished in recent years, the paucity of suitable quantitative instruments for the assessment of children’s character strengths limits the study of character development in childhood. The Character Strengths Inventory for Children (CSI-C) is a new self-report character inventory for children that was designed for easy administration directly to elementary school-aged children. The CSI-C provides an evaluation of 24 character strengths defined in Peterson and Seligman’s Values in Action Classification of Strengths. Data from two samples of 2,061 Israeli children aged 7–12 support the constructs of the instrument. Principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis of the 96 CSI-C items revealed preliminary evidence for a hierarchical structure with 24 lower factors nested within four higher-order latent factors: interpersonal, transcendence, intellectual, and temperance strengths. Children’s interpersonal and temperance strengths were negatively associated with mental health difficulties, and their temperance and transcendence strengths were positively associated with subjective well-being. The intellectual and temperance strengths were correlated with children’s school functioning and grit. The potential uses of the CSI-C in research and practice are discussed.
Highlights
Character education has been a central feature of children’s socialization from the dawn of history to the present day
There are no inventories designed for elementary school children. This study addresses this gap by empirically validating an inventory based on the Values in Action (VIA) classification of strengths to measure individual differences in character in elementary school-aged children
A principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted on the 120-item inventory to identify the factor structure of the Character Strengths Inventory for Children (CSI-C) in the first sample
Summary
Character education has been a central feature of children’s socialization from the dawn of history to the present day. Most parents want to instill foundational values and virtues in their children. They aim to raise children who have desirable, praiseworthy personality traits and whose characters are imbued with a strong ethical compass (Delattre and Russell, 1993). Despite the widespread belief that character is a pillar of positive youth development, there is little research and few instruments to measure individual differences in character among children in elementary school, and little agreement about how character should be conceptualized during this period of development (Berkowitz and Bier, 2004). One of the major obstacles to conducting research on children’s character is the difficulty of devising reliable ways to measure individual differences that correspond to the reading level, concrete. Vital questions about character formation and how it relates to the flourishing of young children remain unanswered
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