Strengthening School Connectedness to Increase Student Success
Category: Student Well-Being and Mental Health
The Values in Action Youth Survey (VIA Youth Survey) is an open-access Likert survey for children ages 10-17 measuring 24 character strengths within the broad categories Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance, Transcendence, and Wisdom. It has both a 96- and 198- item version, and it has been adapted into many other languages and shorter forms. Values in Action also makes adult character strength surveys and other assessments for younger children such as the Character Strengths Inventory for Children (CSI-C) and the Character Strengths Inventory for Early Childhood (CSI-EC) for children ages 7-12 and 3-6, respectively.
Content
Grades
5th Grade,
6th Grade,
7th Grade,
8th Grade,
9th Grade,
10th Grade,
11th Grade,
12th Grade
Languages
English
Spanish
Chinese
Other Language/s
Afrikaans*, Arabic, Arabic (Saudi Arabia)*, Armenian, Bulgarian*, Croatian*, Danish, Dutch, Farsi (Persian), Filipino, Finnish, French, Georgian*, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi*, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer*, Korean, Latvian, Marathi*, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian*, Russian, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian*, Urdu, Vietnamese*
Translations marked with an asterisk* are in development and have not yet been evaluated for reliability.
Translations marked with an asterisk* are in development and have not yet been evaluated for reliability.
Respondent
Student
Administration Information
Length
15 minutes
Administration
Computer
Timed
No
Access and Use
Price
Taking the survey is free; youth can access the full report with personal growth tips for $10.00. Full pricing guide here: https://www.viacharacter.org/reports
Contact
https://www.viacharacter.org/about/contact
Open Access
Yes
Use in Research
Burke, J., & Minton, S. J. (2019). Well-being in post-primary schools in Ireland: The assessment and contribution of character strengths. Irish Educational Studies, 38(2), 177-192. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2018.1512887
Suldo, S. M., Hearon, B. V., Bander, B., McCullough, M., Garofano, J., Roth, R. A., & Tan, S. Y. (2015). Increasing elementary school students’ subjective well-being through a classwide positive psychology intervention: Results of a pilot study. Contemporary School Psychology, 19(4), 300-311. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-015-0061-y
Toback, R. L., Graham-Bermann, S. A., & Patel, P. D. (2016). Outcomes of a character strengths–based intervention on self-esteem and self-efficacy of psychiatrically hospitalized youths. Psychiatric Services, 67(5), 574-577. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201500021
Psychometrics
Scoring
Computer scoring
Referencing
Norm-referenced
Psychometric References
McGrath, R. E., & Walker, D. I. (2016). Factor structure of character strengths in youth: Consistency across ages and measures. Journal of Moral Education, 45(4), 400-418. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2016.1213709
Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2006). Moral competence and character strengths among adolescents: The development and validation of the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth. Journal of Adolescence, 29(6), 891-909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2006.04.011
Shogren, K. A., Shaw, L. A., Raley, S. K., Wehmeyer, M. L., Niemiec, R. M., & Adkins, M. (2018). Assessing character strengths in youth with intellectual disability: Reliability and factorial validity of the VIA-Youth. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 56(1), 13-29. https://doi.org/10.1352/1934-9556-56.1.13
Shogren, K. A., Wehmeyer, M. L., Lang, K., Niemiec, R. M., & Seo, H. (2017). The application of the VIA Classification of Strengths to youth with and without disabilities. Inclusion, 5(3), 213-228. https://doi.org/10.1352/2326-6988-5.3.213
van Eeden, C., Wissing, M. P., Dreyer, J., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2008). Validation of the values in action inventory of strengths for youth (VIA-Youth) among South African learners. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 18(1), 143-154. https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2008.10820181
National Comparison
No
Item Type
Likert
