An Investigation of Character Strengths in Relation to the Academic Success of College Students

By John W. Lounsbury, Leslee A. Fisher, Jacob J. Levy, Deborah P. Welsh. Individual Differences Research, 2009

217 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Based on a sample of 237 university undergraduate students, we examined the 24 Values in Action (VIA) character strengths in relation to two indices of academic success--student satisfaction and grade point average (GPA). All 24 character strengths were positively and significantly related to General Life Satisfaction; 22 were significantly, positively related to College Satisfaction; and 16, to GPA. Multiple correlations for each of these sets of predictors were, respectively: R = .57, .47, and .41. Similarities to and differences between the present results and cognate studies based on adult and young adult samples were noted. Individual results were discussed in terms of construct meaning and functional relationships for college student behavior. Findings were interpreted from the perspectives of lifespan development, college student behavior, identity theory, "emerging adulthood", Big Five personality model, and personality research on life satisfaction. Potential implications for college student interventions were drawn, the rich potential for elaborating the construct validity of character strengths vis-à-vis college student behavior was noted, and results were interpreted as providing strong support for the usefulness of the VIA inventory in the college context.

Subfields: Education, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9818c10fa8dd8dae31ae4f36d1af97411d1315cd

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Citations in the corpus

Forgiveness, Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being Among Filipino Adolescents (2014, background): “Determinants of life satisfaction include: humor (Lounsbury et al. 2009), optimism (Bailey et al.”
Ethics, Values, Virtues, and Character Strengths in Mindfulness-Based Interventions: a Psychological Science Perspective (2015, background): “Grade point average in college students is most strongly related to persistence, open-mindedness, love of learning, and self-regulation (Lounsbury et al. 2009).”
The Role of a Good Character in 12-Year-Old School Children: Do Character Strengths Matter in the Classroom? (2012, background): “, perseverance, open-mindedness, love of learning, self-regulation, and prudence) and self-reported grade point average (GPA; Lounsbury et al. 2009).”
Positive Feelings at School: On the Relationships Between Students’ Character Strengths, School-Related Affect, and School Functioning (2016, background): “Research with students in different educational settings (e.g., primary school, secondary school, college) provided promising initial evidence that character strengths seem to matter in the schooling context (e.g., Lounsbury et al. 2009; Park and Peterson 2006; Weber and Ruch 2012a).”