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The Encouragement Character Strength Scale: Scale development and psychometric properties
Y Joel Wong1, Munyi Shea2, Shu-Yi Wang1
1Counseling and Educational Psychology Department.
Journal of Counseling Psychology
|February 5, 2019
Summary
The new Encouragement Character Strength Scale (ECSS) effectively measures the strength of encouragement. This scale demonstrates strong psychometric properties and validity across diverse populations, supporting its use in psychology.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Positive Psychology
- Counseling Psychology
Background:
- Encouragement is a vital character strength, defined as the enjoyment and ability to motivate others through affirmations.
- This strength is particularly relevant to counseling psychology due to its focus on human strengths and applications in therapy and supervision.
- Existing measures may not fully capture the nuances of encouragement as a distinct character strength.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate the 12-item Encouragement Character Strength Scale (ECSS).
- To assess the psychometric properties, including reliability and validity, of the ECSS across diverse samples.
- To establish the ECSS as a unidimensional measure of encouragement.
Main Methods:
- Development of the 12-item Encouragement Character Strength Scale (ECSS).
- Administration of the ECSS to diverse samples, including noncollege adults, Latinx-majority college students, and psychotherapists.
- Psychometric analyses including bifactor modeling, reliability (internal consistency, temporal stability), and validity (criterion-related, discriminant, incremental, convergent).
Main Results:
- The ECSS demonstrated strong psychometric properties, including evidence for a general factor and unidimensionality.
- The scale showed measurement invariance across race and gender.
- Significant positive correlations were found between ECSS scores and measures of secure attachment, generativity, empathy, well-being, and other positive psychological constructs.
- ECSS scores correlated with positive features of written encouragement and with other-reported scores, supporting convergent validity.
Conclusions:
- The ECSS is a reliable and valid measure of the character strength of encouragement.
- The scale is suitable for use across diverse populations and research contexts within psychology.
- The findings support the importance of encouragement as a distinct character strength and its positive associations with psychological health and functioning.
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