Character Strengths in Children and Adolescents: Reliability and Initial Validity of the German Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (German VIA-Youth)

The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (VIA-Youth) is a self-report inventory assessing 24 character strengths among people 10–17 years of age. This paper describes the adaptation and initial validation of a German version of this measure utilizing several samples (in total N = 2,110 self-reports of participants aged 10–17 years, 56.5% girls; N = 219 parent-reports) from Germany and Switzerland. The 24 scales yielded high reliability and exhibited stability over 4 months. Self-reports and parent-ratings of strengths converged well. An oblique five-factor solution was found to represent the data well. There were small age effects, and small to medium gender effects (e.g., girls scored higher on beauty and kindness). Character strengths of hope, gratitude, love, and zest correlated positively with global life satisfaction. Furthermore, most of the strengths were strong predictors of general self-efficacy. Overall, the German VIA-Youth demonstrated good psychometric properties and promising evidence for validity. The German VIA-Youth is recommended for the assessment of character strengths in German-speaking children and adolescents. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000169 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-89002 Accepted Version Originally published at: Ruch, Willibald; Weber, Marco; Park, Nansook; Peterson, Christopher (2014). Character strengths in children and adolescents. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 30(1):57-64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000169 This manuscript was published as: Ruch, W., Weber, M., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2014). Character strengths in children and adolescents: Reliability and initial validity of the German Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (German VIA-­‐Youth). European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 30, 57-­‐64. doi:10.1027/1015-­‐5759/a000169 Running head: GERMAN VIA-YOUTH 1 Character Strengths in Children and Adolescents: Reliability and Initial Validity of the German Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (German VIA-Youth) Willibald Ruch and Marco Weber University of Zurich, Switzerland Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson University of Michigan, USA Author Notes Willibald Ruch, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland; Marco Weber, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland; Nansook Park, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, USA; Christopher Peterson, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, USA. The authors thank all participating children, adolescents, and parents for filling in the questionnaires. Address correspondence to Willibald Ruch, Section on Personality and Assessment, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14/7, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland, E-mail: [email protected], Phone: +41 44 635 7520, Fax: +41 44 635 7529