Human Character in the IPIP: Towards Shorter, More Content-Valid, and Cross-Culturally Comparable IPIP-VIA Character Strength Scales

Abstract

The “Values in Action” (VIA) framework is currently the most prominent approach to conceptualizing human character. VIA posits 24 character strengths that are purportedly valued across cultures and promote the well-being of both individuals and communities. However, unresolved limitations in the assessment of these character strengths continue to hamper theoretical progress in research on human character based on the VIA framework. Here we sought to lay a new foundation for ad-vanced assessment of strengths by refining and extensively validating an existing open-science inventory from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP). Using data from a U.S. community sample and four quota samples from the United Kingdom and Germany, we investigated whether valid, cross-culturally comparable, and economical assessment of the VIA character strengths is possible with the IPIP. Experts selected suitable items with the aim to obtain 24 balanced-keyed short scales. Different experts then translated these items to German. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, we established essential unidimensionality and well-fitting measure-ment models for each scale. All scales achieved at least partial scalar invariance across languages. Reliability estimates were satisfactory. Extensive analyses of the strengths’ nomological network placed character strengths between Big Five personality traits and basic human values, confirming that VIA strengths emphasize self-transcendence rather than self-enhancement. With few excep-tions, the 24 character strengths scales were sufficiently distinct from the Big Five, and many showed incremental predictive validity, also for “good life” criteria. The 96-item inventory “IPIP-VIA-R” offers a sound and fully open-science approach to future research on character strengths.

Measuring Global Character Dimensions: An Ant Colony Optimization Approach Towards Three Core Strengths Scales

“…Measurement of the VIA trait space has so far mainly focused on the 24 character strengths (Bluemke et al, 2021;McGrath et al, 2021), which have a similar level of abstraction as personality facets. By contrast, because of the longstanding lack of consensus regarding the number and nature of meaningful higher-order dimensions in the VIA framework, measures of factor-analytically determined global VIA traits have long been in short supply.…”

“…To allow for high-quality, open-access measurement of global VIA traits, we developed and validated scales measuring the three well-interpretable, truly global, and crossculturally replicable VIA dimensions positivity, dependability, and mastery that Partsch et al (2021) established in their factor-analytic study. For this purpose, we purposefully selected six items for each scale from a refined public domain VIA instrument, the 96-item IPIP-VIA-R (Bluemke et al, 2021), with the help of an ACO algorithm that simultaneously optimized multiple psychometric criteria. The resulting three core strengths scales lend themselves to economically measure human character when global traits (as opposed to the 24 narrower VIA character strengths) are of interest.…”

“…We developed the three core strengths scales based on the IPIP-VIA-R inventory. The 96 items of the IPIP-VIA-R (Bluemke et al, 2021) measure each of the 24 VIA character strengths with two positively and two negatively keyed items on a fully labeled 5-point rating scale ranging from "does not apply at all" to "applies completely".…”

“…To further contribute to the establishment of the factor-analytic trait hierarchy, Partsch et al (2021) revisited the hierarchical structure of the 24 character strengths with a refined methodological approach. They scrutinized Levels I-VIII of the trait hierarchy that resulted from applying Goldberg's Bass-ackwards analysis to data from large heterogeneous samples of respondents from Germany and the U.K. who completed a revised VIA inventory based on the IPIP (IPIP-VIA-R; Bluemke et al, 2021). They found that only Levels I-III consisted exclusively of well-interpretable, truly global (i.e., comprising at least three highly loading character strengths), and cross-culturally replicable dimensions, whereby Level III emerged as the most useful level of analysis.…”

“…To summarize, we developed and validated an 18-item inventory to measure three global core strengths (or metatraits) based on the public domain IPIP-VIA-R inventory (Bluemke et al, 2021), which is based on the IPIP (Goldberg et al, 2006). We approached the combinatorial problem of selecting the most suitable 18 out of 96 items with an ACO algorithm (Olaru et al, 2019;Schroeders et al, 2016).…”