Effectiveness of culture-based character strengths training on reinforcing character strengths and promoting students' mental well-being

Recently, character strengths-based interventions have had very effective results on increasing well-being in numerous studies in different parts of the world.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of character strengths training on reinforcing of character strengths and promoting studentschr('39') mental well-being in emerging adulthood period.

This study was a semi-experimental research with pre-test, post-test design and a control group. Research population consisted of students of the University of Tehran during 2019-2020 academic year from among whom 34 MA students were selected using convenient sampling method and were assigned to experiment (15 individuals) and control (19 individuals) groups. Research tools used in the study included Mental Well-being Questionnaire (Andrews & Robinson, 1991) and Iranian Character Strengths Questionnaire (Hassaniraad, 2020). Before the interventions, pretest was conducted for the two groups. Then, the experiment group received Character Strengths Culture-Based Interventions (Hassaniraad, 2020) for 12 60-minutes sessions. After the interventions, post-test and one month later, follow-up was performed on both groups. The obtained data were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance.

The post-test results showed that in the experiment group, the scores of life satisfaction, negative emotion, and character strengths (including wisdom, courage, humanity, and transcendence) all were at a higher level compared to the control group (P< 0/01). Observed changes in the experiment group were also somewhat stable at the follow-up stage.

Based on the results, it can be concluded that the package developed has an effective role in reinforcing character strengths and promoting studentschr('39') mental well-being.