The VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS), formerly known as the "Values in Action Inventory," is a proprietary psychological assessment measure designed to identify an individual's profile of "character strengths".
It was created by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, researchers in the field of positive psychology, in order to operationalize their Character Strengths and Virtues Handbook (CSV). The CSV is the positive psychology counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used in traditional psychology. Unlike the DSM, which scientifically categorizes human deficits and disorders, the CSV classifies positive human strengths. The CSV helps people recognize and build upon their strengths. This aligns with the overall goal of the positive psychology movement, to make people's lives more fulfilling. People can use the VIA-IS to identify their own positive strengths and learn how to capitalize on them.
Classification of strengths
Wisdom: creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective
Courage: bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest
Humanity: love, kindness, social intelligence
Justice: teamwork, fairness, leadership
Temperance: forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation
Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality
Composition and administration
The VIA-IS is a 96-question measure of 24 character strengths. On average, an individual will complete the VIA-IS in 10 to 15 minutes. , the survey is available online and one can retrieve one's results for , at www.viacharacter.org, and over 27,000,000 people have participated.
Participants are instructed to answer each item on the VIA-IS in terms of “whether the statement describes what you are like”. Participants respond according to a five-point Likert scale ranging from (1=very much unlike me, 5=very much like me). Sample items include “I find the world a very interesting place”, which gauges curiosity, and “I always let bygone be bygones”, which gauges forgiveness. People can score anywhere from 10 to 50 points for each of the 24 strengths. A higher score on a scale indicates that the participant more strongly identifies with that scale's associated strength. Score reports are delivered to each paying participant at the completion of the survey. Feedback is provided for the signature strengths, but not for the lesser strengths. The results rank order the participant's strengths from 1–24, with the top four to seven strengths considered “signature strengths”.
History
As a relatively new field of research, positive psychology lacked a common vocabulary for discussing measurable positive traits before 2004. Traditional psychology benefited from the creation of DSM, as it provided researchers and clinicians with the same set of language from which they could talk about the negative. As a first step in remedying this disparity between tradition and positive psychology, Peterson and Seligman set out to identify, organize, and measure character.
They began by defining the notion of character as traits that are possessed by an individual and are stable over time, but can still be impacted by setting and thus are subject to change. They brainstormed with a group of noted positive psychology scholars. They examined ancient cultures (including their religions, politics, education, and philosophies) for information about how people in the past construed human virtue. The researchers looked for virtues that were present across cultures and time. Six core virtues emerged from their analysis: courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom.
Next, Peterson and Seligman proposed a model of classification. The hierarchical system is modeled after the Linnaean classification of species, which ranges from a specific species to more general and broad categories. The six core values are the broadest category and are, “core characteristics valued by moral philosophers and religious thinkers”. Peterson and Seligman then moved down the hierarchy to identify character strengths, which are “the psychological processes or mechanisms that define the virtues”.
