Podium Presentation - 10 minutes International Positive Psychology Association 7th IPPA World Congress 2021

Practice Make Positive: Initial findings from an eight-session character strengths intervention delivered in church-based small groups (#10)

Roger Bretherton 1
  1. University of Lincoln, Lincoln, LINCOLNSHIRE, United Kingdom

Empirical evidence suggests that psychological interventions targeting character strengths (CSs) can produce significant improvements in psychological wellbeing (Gander, et al., 2013). Strength Interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in targeting multiple CSs associated with wellbeing, and individual CSs (Niemiec, 2017). Many of these interventions are relevant to religious and spiritual communities. Nevertheless, while some empirical work has been completed (McMinn, 2017), CSs have not received wide dissemination and evaluation in Christian churches.

This presentation will outline the content and evaluation of The Character Course a programme of eight ninety-minute sessions designed for church-based small groups, which teaches eight Character Strengths selected based on empirical literature: learning, hope, love, gratitude, forgiveness, humour, persistence and curiosity. Each session contains a short film, discussion questions and exercises to be practiced between sessions. The programme is available for free as an open access resource at www.thecharactercourse.com.

In an initial evaluation, a sample of 206 adult participants belonging to 24 small groups in the UK, completed the course. Pre- and post-measures of Character Strengths (96-Item VIA Inventory of Strengths-P, McGrath, 2017), Spiritual growth (Spiritual Transformation Inventory- STI, Hall, 2012), psychological wellbeing (PERMA Profiler, Butler & Kern, 2016) and social desirability (Marlowe-Crowne SD Scale- Form C, Reynolds, 1982) were administered. Participants provided ratings of group attendance and practice between sessions, on a 7-point Likert Scale. Analysis proved difficult as all participants scored highly in social desirability. Participants reported increases on all outcome measures (Spiritual Growth and Wellbeing) following completion of the course, but these results did not attain statistical significance. Repeated Measure Analysis of Variance however indicated that participants reporting high attendance and high practice showed significant improvements in positive emotion in comparison to other participants. A finding consistent with previous research, suggesting that character strengths practice leads to improvements in wellbeing. 

  1. Gander, F., Proyer, R. T., Ruch, W., & Wyss, T. (2013). Strength-based positive interventions: Further evidence for their potential in enhancing well-being and alleviating depression. Journal of Happiness Studies, 14(4), 1241-1259.
  2. Niemiec, R. M. (2017). Character strengths interventions: A field guide for practitioners . Boston, MA: Hogrefe Publishing.
  3. McMinn, M. R. (2017). The science of virtue: Why positive psychology matters to the church. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.
  4. McGrath, R. E. (2017). Technical report: The VIA assessment suite for adults: Development and initial evaluation . Cincinnati, OH: VIA Institute on Character.
  5. Butler, J., & Kern, M. L. (2016). The PERMA-profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6(3), 1-48. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526
  6. Reynolds, W. M. (1982). Development of reliable and valid short forms of the marlowe-crowne social desirability scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 38(1), 119-125.
  • Keywords: Positive emotions, Religion and Spirituality, Strengths