Character strengths
Which of twenty-four strengths of character you reach for first, and which least.
- Questions
- 72
- 10 min
- Character strengths and virtues (24 strengths)
What this is
Original items on the public classification of twenty-four character strengths under six virtues (Peterson and Seligman, 2004), three a strength, one of them reverse-keyed. No commercial inventory's items are used. Public-domain IPIP scales for the same strengths exist and could be substituted as data if you want English wording with published reliability.
Where it comes from
written down, not impliedCharacter strengths and virtues (24 strengths)
The twenty-four strengths under six virtues come from Peterson and Seligman's classification (2004). The strength names are ordinary words; no commercial inventory's questions are used.
Written for this app
- Reliability
- not measured
- Factor structure
- not measured
- Validity
- not measured
Further reading
- Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification (opens in a new tab). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; New York: Oxford University Pressoriginal source
- McGrath, R. E. (2015). Integrating psychological and cultural perspectives on virtue: The hierarchical structure of character strengths (opens in a new tab). The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(5), 407–424critique
Read the result as a structured version of what you said, not as a measurement of you.
Why these questions carry no evidence
Every questionnaire in this app writes its own items, because the framework behind an instrument is usually public while the published questionnaire is copyrighted. That is the honest way to build it and it has a cost worth stating plainly: reliability and validity belong to a specific set of questions given to a specific group of people, not to the name of the idea behind them. These questions have never been given to a sample, have no norms, and have no evidence that they measure what they are named after.