The Effectiveness of Character Strengths-based Intervention on the Psychological Well-being and Resilience among Adolescents

This paper aims to study the effectiveness of character strengths-based educational program on psychological well-being and resilience in a group of male students. The study is quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test design with nonequivalent control group. 12 years old boy students (30 samples) in private school in district 3 of Tehran & in the academic year of (1399-1400) were selected using convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. They answered the short version of psychological well-being scale (Reef, 1980) and 28-question version of child and adolescent resilience Liebenberg & Ungar (2009) before and after the training. Character strengths-based educational program implemented in 10 one-hour sessions in a group manner for the experimental group. The results of applying the statistical method of multivariate analysis of covariance showed that the character strengths-based educational program had a significant effect on increasing self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, purposeful life and personal growth and resilience among experimental group students. Overall, the findings of this study showed that the character strengths-based educational program is empirically effective on learners’ well-being and psychological immunity through the strengthening of virtues such as wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence, also cognitive and behavioral abilities such as creativity, curiosity, authenticity, courage, honesty, zest, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, justice, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope & religiousness. Accordingly, it is recommended to hold training courses and workshops on improving and reinforcing the character strengths in order to increase the psychological well-being and resilience among adolescents.