Validity of a very short measure of character strengths: The Italian VIA-48

Character strengths are recognized as 24 key personal resources for individual and societal well-being. Their applicability to time-constrained settings (e.g., organizations, counseling services) may be limited by the length of the currently available assessment tools. To address this issue, we developed and tested a very brief measure of character strengths, with only two items per character strength. To do this, in Study 1 (N = 16,722) we first selected the best two items from the Italian VIA-120 based on prototypicality and psychometric properties. Then, in Study 2 (N = 496), we tested the Italian VIA-48 for i) criterion validity using measures of subjective (life satisfaction, positive and negative affect) and psychological (flourishing) well-being as criteria, and ii) test-retest reliability after one month. The results of Study 1 show that the final set of items has satisfactory part-total correlations, goodness of fit, and similarity to the VIA-120. In addition, in Study 2 we found small to moderate correlations between character strengths and indicators of well-being, particularly strong for gratitude, hope, and zest. We could also confirm that the instrument is stable over time, with a median of r = 0.71. Overall, our results suggest that the Italian VIA-48 is a valid way for rapidly assessing character strengths.