VIA Youth Survey

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

Domains
Relationship Skills,
Responsible Decision Making,
Self Awareness,
Self Management,
Social Awareness
Subdomain

Appreciation of Beauty, Bravery, Creativity, Curiosity, Fairness, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Honesty, Hope, Humility, Humor, Judgment, Kindness, Leadership, Love, Love of Learning, Perseverance, Perspective, Prudence, Self-Regulation, Social Intelligence, Spirituality, Teamwork, Zest

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.
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

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

Psychometric Considerations

Psychometrics is the science of psychological assessment. A primary goal of EdInstruments is to provide information on crucial psychometric topics including Validity and Reliability – essential concepts of evaluation, which indicate how well an instrument measures a construct - as well as additional properties that are worthy of consideration when selecting an instrument of measurement.

 Learn more