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The hierarchy of strengths: Their relationships with subjective well-being among Chinese teachers in Hong Kong
Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875
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The hierarchy of strengths: Their relationships with subjective well-being among Chinese teachers in Hong Kong David W. Chan* Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 2 July 2008 Received in revised form 10 December 2008 Accepted 13 January 2009
This study investigated the hierarchy of strengths in a sample of 228 Chinese prospective and in-service teachers in Hong Kong. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for a hierarchical model with 24 first-order factors of strengths subsumed under six second-order factors of strength domains. Teachers who reported greater life satisfaction, experiencing more positive and less negative emotions tended to be those with higher levels of emotional strengths and strengths of hope and zest. Implications of the findings on the relationships between strengths and subjective well-being for helping teachers to promote and cultivate strengths to combat teacher stress and burnout are discussed. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Strengths Virtues Subjective well-being Chinese teachers Hong Kong
1. Introduction In recent years, a growing number of researchers in psychology are interested in studying positive aspects of health and well-being (see Aspinwall & Staudinger, 2003; Keyes & Haidt, 2003; Linley & Joseph, 2004; Seligman, 2002, 2003; Snyder & Lopez, 2002, 2007). In particular, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) have argued convincingly that traditional scientific psychology has focused disproportionately if not exclusively on distress and pathology, and have called for a shift of emphasis to the study of positive emotions, positive characters, and positive institutions as well as individual, community, and societal factors that contribute to a good and fulfilled life or a life worth living. In education, there is also a similar call for positive schooling that emphasizes the applications of the concepts or tenets of positive psychology to foster a positive learning environment (Snyder & Lopez, 2007). This emphasis is however not a new development. Many notable educators have paved the way for this approach. They include well-known philosophers such as Benjamin Franklin, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and John Dewey who focused on the strengths and assets of students (see Snyder & Lopez, 2007). Alfred Binet, noted for his concept of mental age,
* Tel.: þ852 2609 6947; fax: þ852 2603 6921. E-mail address: [email protected] 0742-051X/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.01.010
stressed the enhancement of student skills as much as the remediation of student weaknesses (Binet & Simon, 1905). Lewis Terman throughout his career explored the thinking of brilliant learners (Terman & Oden, 1947). Thus, the recent emphasis on the positives in education could be regarded as the continuation of an old and cherished tradition. Among the initiatives of the positive psychology movement, one major initiative was the development of a classification of strengths and virtues, which would provide a language and a framework for understanding areas of human excellence. This positive classification was envisioned to parallel the framework and language of disease and deficiency in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) for understanding psychopathology. Specifically, this initiative culminated in the Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths and Virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) that included 24 character strengths grouped under six overarching virtues claimed to be shared across culture and human history (Dahlsgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005). While the six virtues or strength domains are endorsed by almost every culture across the world, their manifestations are represented by strengths that could be grouped under 24 categories. Indeed, the 24 specific strengths representing these categories were identified by employing a strategy of piling on synonyms to capture the family resemblance of each strength and keeping to a manageable number the classified strengths that met 12 specified selection criteria (Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004).
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The six strength domains or virtues and the strengths grouped under these strength domains are: Wisdom and knowledge that encompass the five strengths of creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, and perspective, representing cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge; Courage that encompasses the four strengths of integrity, bravery, persistence, and zest, representing emotional strengths that involve the exercise of the will to accomplish goals; Humanity that encompasses the three strengths of kindness, love, and social intelligence, representing interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others; Justice that encompasses the three strengths of fairness, leadership, and teamwork, representing civic strengths that underlie healthy community life; Temperance that encompasses the four strengths of forgiveness, modesty, prudence, and self-regulation, representing strengths that protect against excess; and Transcendence that encompasses the five strengths of appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humour, and spirituality, representing strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning (see Peterson & Seligman, 2004). This VIA classification is intended to provide an integrative framework of strengths that allows strengths to be studied and understood in their complex relationships with each other and with a good and fulfilled life (Linley & Harrington, 2006). However, it is understood that the VIA classification should not be accepted as the final words on categories of strengths, and there might be character strengths that the VIA classification does not capture, given that there are other equally viable classifications of strengths (e.g., Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; Lopez et al., 2006; Smith, 2006). Thus, one might raise questions as to whether the classification is comprehensive enough, whether its inclusion and exclusion criteria are appropriate for strength identification, whether the classification yields an understanding of strengths that provides practical utility, and whether different strength profiles characterize individuals from different cultures as certain character strengths seem to be more evident and more valued in some countries than others (see Park et al., 2004; Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). Despite that there could be different views on how best to classify strengths and whether the VIA classification is relatively comprehensive and universal across cultures, it is generally recognized that a strength perspective that focuses on strengths instead of deficits and disabilities empowers individuals irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, religion, and ability level. Subsequent studies on individuals using their best or signature strengths in new ways as interventions suggested that such interventions could help them increase happiness and reduce depressive symptoms, at least for the 6 months under study (see Seligman et al., 2005). Thus, intervention efforts within the strength perspective could be efforts to help promote, enhance, or cultivate strengths as in strength-based counseling (Smith, 2006) or positive therapy (Joseph & Linley, 2005; Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006; Seligman et al., 2005), allowing individuals to recognize, develop, and celebrate their natural talents and abilities, and to recast their lives to do more of what they are best at doing for a more satisfying life. In this connection, it was of interest to investigate the relationships between various strengths and life satisfaction among individuals. For example, Park et al. (2004) have found that in their Internet samples of 5299 adults aged 35–40 years, the strengths of
hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity were found to relate consistently to life satisfaction. They also found that the relationship between strength and life satisfaction followed a monotonic increasing function, suggesting that the higher the level of strengths, the higher the level of life satisfaction, and that excess level of strength did not diminish life satisfaction. The investigations on strengths and strength-based interventions certainly have implications for teachers’ personal and professional development in teacher education On one hand, it can be argued that teachers and prospective teachers could become good or even better teachers if they identify and recognize their strengths and build on their natural talents in order that they could better help students to identify and develop their talents. Moreover, it can also be maintained that teachers who attend well to their own development and lead satisfying lives should be more able to help students in their whole-person development as well as lead satisfying lives. On the other hand, one would expect that teachers who strive to develop, build, and use their character strengths will become more resilient, more able to cope with stress, and less vulnerable to burnout. Studies on teacher burnout have often decomposed burnout into three components of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (see Maslach, 2003). Emotional exhaustion refers to the feeling of being emotionally overextended and depleted of one’s emotional resources due to the intense contact with students, other teachers and colleagues; depersonalization refers to negative attitudes and callous or excessively detached responses to students; and reduced personal accomplishment refers to a decline in one’s sense of competence and of successful achievement in one’s work in teaching. Invariably, teacher burnout has been studied from the clinical and pathological perspective in Hong Kong (see Chan & Hui, 1995) and around the world (see Maslach, 2003; Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999). Perhaps, this negative emphasis needs to be shifted to an emphasis on the positives under the positive psychology perspective, especially on intervention efforts to help teachers recognize, cultivate, and promote character strengths to combat burnout (Seligman et al., 2005, 2006). With the view to extend the inquiry on strengths to the Chinese educational context, the present study aimed to investigate the 24 strengths under the VIA classification in a sample of Hong Kong Chinese teachers. Specifically, the structure of the hierarchy of strengths was tested using higher-order maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis within the structural equation modelling approach (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993). In addition, like the study of Park et al. (2004), the present study with Hong Kong Chinese teachers focused on examining the different strengths and their relationships with life satisfaction. Going beyond this past study, the present study extended the study of the relationships between strengths and life satisfaction to those between strengths and subjective well-being that could be broadly conceptualized to include people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction (see Diener, 1984; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Robbins & Kliewer, 2000). Diener (1984), in his classic review of the subjective well-being literature, has found considerable empirical evidence to support a tripartite model of subjective well-being, referring to a cognitive aspect of life satisfaction, and an affective aspect encompassing the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect. Therefore, the present study also examined the relationships of different strengths with the satisfaction with life, positive affect, and negative affect as the three components of subjective well-being. In addition, gender differences and age-group differences on the six strength domains and the 24 specific strengths were explored. It was believed that this study of character strengths had important implications for teacher education, providing insights into how
D.W. Chan / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875
teachers could combat burnout through the cultivation and practice of strengths. 2. Method 2.1. Participants Two hundred and twenty-eight prospective and in-service Chinese teachers (71 men and 157 women) enrolled in the teacher education program for secondary school teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong participated voluntarily in a larger research project of which this study was a part. These participants were between the ages of 21 and 51 years (M ¼ 28.49, SD ¼ 6.47). Seventy-nine of them (31 men and 48 women) were prospective teachers with teaching experience only in teaching practice, 149 (40 men and 109 women) were in-service teachers with 1–28 years of teaching experience (M ¼ 5.57, SD ¼ 5.67). 2.2. Measures 2.2.1. The Strengths Inventory (TSI) The 72-item TSI was developed to assess the 24 strengths in this study. The development of the inventory of strengths was based on rational item writing followed by empirical testing (Jackson, 1970). The TSI items (three items for each strength) were first written in Chinese as first-person statements by the author based on the definitions or descriptions of the 24 strengths (e.g., Seligman et al., 2005). Two language teachers who were also graduate students were enlisted to examine and refine the statements to correspond closely to the descriptions of the strengths, and to conduct pilot testing of this initial version of the inventory with a few of their colleagues at their schools. Feedback from these teachers was used to guide the revision of the inventory, and any discrepancies in views on changes between the two teachers were resolved by discussion to arrive at the final items used for this study. In completing the Chinese TSI, participants responded by indicating their endorsement to each of the 72 statements using a five-point scale ranging from 1 (least descriptive of me) to 5 (most descriptive of me). 2.2.2. Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) The five-item SWLS (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) assesses general life satisfaction as the cognitive aspect of subjective well-being. It reveals the individual’s own judgment of his or her quality of life. The scale has demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.87), excellent 2-month test–retest reliability (r ¼ 0.82), and convergent and discriminant validity with other measures of subjective well-being, independent ratings of life satisfaction, self-esteem, clinical symptoms, neuroticism, and emotionality (Diener et al., 1985; Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996; Pavot & Diener, 1993). Since there is an available Chinese version of the scale that has been used with the Chinese population (e.g., Shek, Chan, & Lee, 1997), a bilingual version with items in both English and Chinese was administered to participants to ensure that participants fully understand the items. In completing the scale, participants were requested to indicate their agreement on a fivepoint scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A total score can be obtained by summing the five-item responses, with higher scores reflecting more satisfaction with life. 2.2.3. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) The PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) consists of two scales, one on positive affect and one on negative affect. Each of the scale contains 10 emotion adjectives which are rated to indicate the respondent’s general perception of the amount of time spent
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experiencing each emotion. The two scales are shown to be highly internal consistent (Cronbach’s a above 0.85), largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period (Watson et al., 1988). This study also used Chinese emotion adjectives equivalent to their corresponding English emotion adjectives. The 20 Chinese and 20 English emotion adjectives were made to appear together in the bilingual version to ensure that participants fully understand the emotion adjectives. In completing the scales, participants were requested to make their judgments of experiencing the emotions in general on a five-point scale: 1 (not at all), 2 (a little), 3 (moderately), 4 (quite a bit), and 5 (extremely). A total score on positive affect and one on negative affect can be obtained by summing the ratings on the relevant items. 2.3. Procedure Participants responded in groups of about 50 to 3 self-report scales assembled in a questionnaire. The three scales were the TSI, SWLS, and PANAS. All participants were assured that the data would be kept confidential and would be used for research purposes only. 3. Results 3.1. The hierarchy of strengths To explore whether the TSI items adequately reflected the intended hierarchical structure of six strength domains covering 24 strengths that encompassed 72 items as indicators of the strengths, the item responses of the 228 Chinese teachers were first intercorrelated to yield a 72-item covariance matrix, and the hierarchical model with 24 first-order factors and 6 second-order factors was tested by maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using LISREL 8.71 (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993, 2004). Specifically, the first-order factors were 24 factors with each factor defined by three indicators or items. The second-order factors were six factors with the first to the sixth factors defined by five strengths of wisdom and knowledge, four strengths of courage, three strengths of humanity, three strengths of justice, four strengths of temperance, and five strengths of transcendence, respectively. Since the model would be rejected by the c2 test statistic at a conventional alpha level if a large enough sample was used, and accepted if a small enough sample was used (Browne & Cudeck, 1993), a number of residual-based fit indices and comparison-based fit indices suggested by different researchers based on slightly different perspectives were employed to help determine whether the hypothesized models were well-fitting for these data, with a view that more confidence could be attached to the results if there was a convergence of fit across indices (e.g., Bentler, 1989; Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993; Steiger, 1990). Thus, apart from the chi-square statistic, the fit indices used included the Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA), the Root Mean Squared Residual (RMR) and the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (S-RMR), the Expected Cross-Validation Index (ECVI), the Goodness of Fit Index (GFI), the Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI), and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI). In general, an adequate fit is suggested by RMSEA, RMR and S-RMR values below or approaching 0.05, and by fit index values between 0.80 and 1.00, and a well-fitting model will have small ECVI value, suggesting that there is a high likelihood that the model will cross-validate across a similar-sized sample from the same population (see Byrne, 1998; Diamantopoulos & Siguaw, 2000). Prior to conducting the hierarchical analysis, it was deemed appropriate to assess the extent to which the first-order factor models of strength domains could be fitted to the data using items
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as indicators of specific strengths. In this regard, six separate CFAs were performed using the relevant sets of three items as indicators of the latent variables of specific strengths within each of the six strength domains. For example, in conducting a CFA for the strength domain of wisdom and knowledge, the relevant 15-item covariance matrix (3 items for each strength) was analyzed to test whether the data were adequately represented by the five-factor model defined by the factors of creativity, curiosity, openmindedness, love of learning, and perspective. Similarly, the CFA for the strength domain of justice would examine the three-factor solution defined by the factors of fairness, leadership, and teamwork using the relevant nine-item covariance matrix. The results of the six CFAs with the various fit indices are summarized in Table 1, which indicated that the six first-order models representing the six strength domains exhibited only generally mediocre fit to the data, with reasonably acceptable fit indices for the justice domain and relatively poor fit indices for the humanity domain. Although it might be possible to achieve better fit through deleting poor items in re-estimation, it was considered less desirable to define each strength factor by less than three items or combine strengths because of the deletion of items such that the original hierarchy of strengths could not be properly tested. Since the overall results suggested that the hypothesized structuring of individual strengths into their respective domains seemed to be tenable, it was considered that the hierarchy could be further tested using secondorder CFA. To explore whether the 24 specific strengths each defined by three indicators could be subsumed under six higher-order factors of strength domains, higher-order confirmatory factor analysis was performed using the 72-item covariance matrix to yield a factor solution of 24 specific strengths subsumed under six strength domains. The results of the analysis conducted to estimate all parameters simultaneously indicated reasonably acceptable fit as
represented by the single set of fit indices as shown in Table 1, with the exception of the poor absolute fit index of GFI, suggesting that the structure of the hierarchy of strengths could be regarded as tenable. The correlations among the second-order factors of strength domains indicated that there were substantial correlations relating humanity to courage, justice, and temperance, suggesting that these strength domains could be closely associated, and a more parsimonious model might be considered for future investigations. The first-order and second-order completely standardized solutions together with the second-order factor correlation matrix are summarized in Table 2. 3.2. The six strength domains Since the hierarchical structure of strengths was tenable based on the higher-order CFA, it was considered appropriate to score teachers’ responses to the TSI to yield 24 scores on 24 specific strengths and 6 global scores on 6 strength domains for further analyses. Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations, and measures of internal consistency of the six strength domain scales, the global scores being based on aggregating the relevant item responses in the respective strength domains. It can be seen that the coefficients alpha as indices of internal consistency of the six scales were moderately high (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.69–0.82). These six strength domain scores correlated substantially and significantly (p < 0.005) with each other (r ¼ 0.21–0.57). The level of mean scores on the six domains of strengths indicated that these teachers reported higher interpersonal and transcendental strengths (humanity and transcendence). Support for the differential level of endorsement could be gleaned from the one-way within-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA), treating the six strength domain scale scores as dependent measures. The ANOVA results with the multivariate test indicated that the overall differences among the six
Table 1 Summary of fit indices evaluating models of human strengths using maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (N ¼ 228).
c2 First-order factor model Wisdom and knowledge Independence model Five-factor model
1536.18 251.22*
Courage Independence model Four-factor model
1466.86 226.91*
df
Fit index RMSEA
RMR
S-RMR
GFI
NNFI
CFI
ECVI
105 80
– 0.097
– 0.053
– 0.076
– 0.871
– 0.853
– 0.888
6.899 1.459
66 48
– 0.128
– 0.071
– 0.085
– 0.857
– 0.829
– 0.876
6.568 1.264
Humanity Independence model Three-factor model
543.37 127.63**
36 24
– 0.138
– 0.068
– 0.102
– 0.889
– 0.715
– 0.810
2.473 0.747
Justice Independence model Three-factor model
732.01 44.02**
36 24
– 0.061
– 0.035
– 0.057
– 0.959
– 0.950
– 0.966
3.304 0.379
Temperance Independence model Four-factor model
630.32 121.38***
66 48
– 0.082
– 0.067
– 0.079
– 0.918
– 0.817
– 0.867
2.882 0.799
1369.21 218.12**
105 80
– 0.087
– 0.076
– 0.095
– 0.886
– 0.847
– 0.883
6.164 1.313
19319.30 4938.68*
2556 2445
– 0.067
– 0.073
– 0.097
– 0.623
– 0.853
– 0.859
85.741 23.369
Transcendence Independence model Five-factor model First-order and second-order factor model Independence model First- and second-order factor model (24 first order/6 second order)
Note. Fit indices are from LISREL analyses (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993). c2 ¼ Normal Theory Weighted Least Squares c2; RMSEA ¼ Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation; RMR ¼ Root Mean Squared Residual; S-RMR ¼ Standardized Root Mean Square Residual; GFI ¼ Goodness of Fit Index; NNFI ¼ Non-Normed Fit Index; CFI ¼ Comparative Fit Index; ECVI ¼ Expected Cross-Validation Index. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
D.W. Chan / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875
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Table 2 Completely standardized solution of the hierarchy of strengths by maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (N ¼ 228). Loading of items on first-order factors as indicators of strength
First-order factor
Second-order factor
Item1
Item2
Item3
Strength
1
2
3
4
5
6
48 37 47 77 51 39 56 56 63 72 34 37 62 41 67 62 69 64 66 51 75 22 84 39
55 54 68 79 64 45 68 71 59 62 79 70 68 68 78 54 32 18 42 66 45 73 73 53
66 55 55 30 78 52 49 79 66 46 68 40 51 80 51 73 78 25 46 68 65 80 53 80
Creativity Curiosity Open-mindedness Love of learning Perspective Integrity Bravery Persistence Zest Kindness Love Social intelligence Fairness Leadership Teamwork Forgiveness Modesty Prudence Self-regulation Appreciation of beauty Gratitude Hope Humour Spirituality
81 87 91 69 73 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 99 83 91 88 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 78 59 73 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 51 88 93 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 63 33 77 99 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 53 99 85 33 42
Second-order factor correlation matrix Factor 1 (Wisdom/knowledge) Factor 2 (Courage) Factor 3 (Humanity) Factor 4 (Justice) Factor 5 (Temperance) Factor 6 (Transcendence)
58 46 36 43 60
84 56 64 52
86 80 76
65 45
59
Note. Decimals are omitted.
scores were significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.59, F (5, 223) ¼ 30.73, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.408. Since no particular pairs of scores were identified as providing theoretically more meaningful comparisons, all possible pairs of scores were compared. These follow-up paired ttests on all 15 possible pairs of scores indicated that 8 pairs were significantly different after controlling for family wise error rate across the 15 tests using the Bonferroni procedure, and t-values were evaluated at 0.05/15 or 0.0033 level of significance. In summary, these teachers reported higher levels of interpersonal and transcendental strengths (which did not differ significantly from each other) than emotional, civic, intellectual, and temperance strengths (which also did not differ significantly from each other). To explore whether there were significant gender differences and age-group differences in teachers’ endorsement of the six strength domains, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted using the six strength domains as dependent variables, and gender and age group (median split, 26 years or younger
vs. older than 26 years) as grouping variables. The results indicated that the overall age-group main effect and the gender/age-group interaction effects were nonsignificant, but the gender main effect was significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.87, F (6, 219) ¼ 5.39, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.129. Subsequent univariate ANOVA on each of the strength domain scores was conducted as a follow-up test to the significant MANOVA gender main effect. Using the Bonferroni procedure to adjust for multiple tests, each ANOVA was evaluated at the value of 0.05/6 or 0.0083. The results indicated that female teachers endorsed a significantly higher level of transcendental strengths than did male teachers, F (1, 224) ¼ 10.31, p ¼ 0.002, with a modest effect size, partial h2 ¼ 0.044. 3.3. The 24 specific strengths Since the general results of analyses conducted on global strength domain scores might not reveal important differences
Table 3 Means, standard deviations, and internal consistency measures of strength domains (N ¼ 228). Strength domain
Number of items
M
SD
a
Significant group differences
Humanity Transcendence Courage Justice Wisdom/knowledge Temperance
9 15 12 9 15 12
11.70 11.46 10.97 10.90 10.85 10.79
1.35 1.36 1.51 1.34 1.30 1.31
0.69 0.76 0.82 0.75 0.81 0.70
– F>M – – – –
Note. Strength domain scores (averaged across strengths) are in the range of 3–15, and are arranged in descending order of magnitude. a is the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency measure. The significant group differences are the results from univariate analyses of variance as a follow-up of the multivariate analysis. F ¼ female teachers; M ¼ male teachers.
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Table 4 Means, standard deviations, and internal consistency measures of specific strengths (N ¼ 228). Strength
Number of items
M
SD
a
Significant group differences
Love Gratitude Teamwork Spirituality Hope Integrity Kindness Social intelligence Forgiveness Open-mindedness Humour Persistence Zest Curiosity Modesty Appreciation of beauty Love of learning Perspective Prudence Leadership Fairness Self-regulation Creativity Bravery
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
12.39 12.03 11.86 11.64 11.44 11.41 11.37 11.34 11.32 11.28 11.21 11.21 11.11 11.08 11.03 11.00 10.97 10.67 10.49 10.46 10.39 10.32 10.23 10.14
1.76 1.97 1.61 2.40 1.85 1.88 1.81 1.82 1.81 1.68 2.03 1.96 1.86 1.74 2.03 2.31 1.92 1.94 1.91 1.85 1.83 2.04 1.87 2.09
0.58 0.63 0.69 0.54 0.56 0.47 0.57 0.42 0.65 0.57 0.74 0.72 0.65 0.44 0.58 0.63 0.61 0.70 0.40 0.61 0.61 0.54 0.58 0.60
F>M F>M – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Note. Strength scale scores are in the range of 3–15, and are arranged in descending order of magnitude. a is the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency measure. The significant group differences are the results from univariate analyses of variance as a follow-up of the multivariate analysis. F ¼ female teachers; M ¼ male teachers.
among individual specific strengths, similar analyses were conducted on the 24 specific strengths. Table 4 shows the means and standard deviations, and measures of internal consistency of the 24 specific strength scales, the scores being based on aggregating the three relevant item responses in the respective specific strengths. It can be seen that the coefficients alpha as indices of internal consistency of the 24 scales were of moderate values (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.40–0.74), relatively lower than the values for the global strength domains, as could be expected from the small number of items in each scale. The correlations between pairs of specific strengths were highly variable, ranging from r ¼ 0.11 to r ¼ 0.59. The level of mean scores on the 24 specific strengths indicated that these teachers reported higher endorsement on love, gratitude, teamwork, spirituality, and hope, and lower endorsement on fairness, self-regulation, creativity, and bravery. Support for the differential level of endorsement could be gleaned from the oneway within-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA), treating the 24 specific strength scores as dependent measures. The ANOVA results with the multivariate test indicated that the overall differences among the 24 scores were significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.26, F (23, 205) ¼ 25.91, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.744. Since no particular pairs of scores were identified as providing theoretically more meaningful comparisons, all possible pairs of scores were compared. These follow-up paired t-tests on all 276 possible pairs of scores indicated that 148 pairs (53.62%) were significantly different after controlling for family wise error rate using the Bonferroni procedure, and t-values were evaluated at 0.05/276 or 0.00018 level of significance. In summary, the specific strength of love was reported to be at the top of endorsement, followed by gratitude, teamwork and spirituality (which did not differ significantly from each other), and the specific strengths of fairness, self-regulation, creativity, and bravery (which did not differ significantly from each other) were reported to be at the bottom of endorsement. A MANOVA was also conducted to explore significant gender differences and age-group differences in teachers’ endorsement of the 24 specific strengths. Similar to the findings with the six strength domains, the results indicated that the overall age-group main effect and the gender/age-group interaction effects were
nonsignificant, but the gender main effect was significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.69, F (24, 201) ¼ 3.74, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.309. Subsequent univariate ANOVA on each of the specific strength scores was conducted as a follow-up test to the significant MANOVA gender main effect. Using the Bonferroni procedure to adjust for multiple tests, each ANOVA was evaluated at the value of 0.05/24 or 0.0021. The results indicated that significant differences favouring female teachers were found only for two specific strengths, namely love, F (1, 224) ¼ 12.86, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.054 and gratitude, F (1, 224) ¼ 20.78, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.085, and the effect sizes for both differences were relatively modest. 3.4. Predicting subjective well-being using strengths and strength domains To examine the relationships between strengths (specific strengths and strength domains) and subjective well-being, teachers’ responses to the SWLS and PANAS were scored to yield scores on life satisfaction (5 items; M ¼ 16.09, SD ¼ 3.68; Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.83), positive affect (10 items; M ¼ 34.68, SD ¼ 5.15; Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.76), and negative affect (10 items; M ¼ 24.33, SD ¼ 7.19; Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.87), with life satisfaction correlating substantially and significantly (p < 0.001) with positive affect (r ¼ 0.28) and negative affect (r ¼ 0.41), and with the two affect scores correlating minimally with each other (r ¼ 0.07). Analyses involving the PANAS scores were based on 227 teachers due to missing data. Table 5 shows the correlations between strengths (specific strengths and strength domains) and each of the three components of subjective well-being. Focusing on the strength domains, it can be seen from Table 5 that all strength domains except temperance correlated most highly with positive affect, and all strength domains except intellectual strengths (wisdom and knowledge) correlated substantially with life satisfaction. The negative correlations of strength domains with negative affect were in general relatively less substantial, the exception being the substantial negative correlation between emotional strengths (courage) and negative affect. Focusing on individual specific strengths, the patterns of correlations between
D.W. Chan / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875 Table 5 Correlation between strengths and subjective well-being (N ¼ 228)
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Table 6 Summary of multiple regression analyses for the prediction of the components of subjective well-being using separate strength domains and specific strengths (N ¼ 228).
Specific strengths
Correlation with Life satisfaction
Positive affect
Negative affect
Wisdom/knowledge Creativity Curiosity Open-mindedness Love of learning Perspective
14* 04 09 04 17** 13
55*** 44*** 40*** 38*** 37*** 36***
16* 01 07 15* 22*** 12
Courage Integrity Bravery Persistence Zest
33*** 25*** 22*** 19** 39***
54*** 29*** 50*** 32*** 54***
30*** 18** 25*** 20** 30***
Humanity Kindness Love Social intelligence
32*** 23*** 22*** 27***
42*** 30*** 31*** 34***
14* 11 09 11
Justice Fairness Leadership Teamwork
27*** 15* 22*** 24***
42*** 24*** 35*** 39***
10 12 01 12
Temperance Forgiveness Modesty Prudence Self-regulation
25*** 20** 08 05 35***
15* 18** 03 04 28***
Transcendence Appreciation of beauty Gratitude Hope Humour Spirituality
34*** 20** 30*** 45*** 07 11
42*** 32*** 29*** 36*** 29*** 12
18** 20** 19** 07 17* 18** 04 12 30*** 01 12
Variable
B
SE B
Strength domains as predictors Satisfaction with life Transcendence 0.63 Courage 0.55
b
0.19 0.17
0.23*** 0.23***
1.33 0.97 0.68
0.24 0.22 0.22
0.34*** 0.28*** 0.18**
1.43
0.30
0.30***
Specific strengths as predictors Satisfaction with life Hope 0.74 Self-regulation 0.39
0.12 0.11
0.37*** 0.22***
0.84 0.72 0.72 0.47
0.17 0.16 0.17 0.16
0.30*** 0.26*** 0.23*** 0.19**
0.69 0.79 0.60
0.28 0.28 0.22
Positive affect Wisdom/knowledge Courage Justice Negative affect Courage
Positive affect Zest Creativity Teamwork Bravery Negative affect Hope Zest Modesty
R2
F
0.15
20.36***
0.41
51.76***
0.09
22.02***
0.24
35.68***
0.46
47.82***
0.15
12.76***
0.18* 0.20** 0.17**
Note. Stepwise procedures were used with criteria based on probability of F to enter 0.01 and probability of F to remove 0.05. Data involving positive affect and negative affect are based on n ¼ 227 because of missing data. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
strength domains and the components of subjective well-being generally applied to specific strengths. Notably, all emotional strengths (integrity, bravery, persistence, and zest), love of learning, forgiveness, self-regulation, and hope were found to associate substantially with all three components of subjective well-being, whereas the specific strengths of prudence and spirituality did not correlate substantially with any of the three components. To examine more closely how the strengths and strength domains could contribute to each component of subjective wellbeing, a series of multiple linear regression analyses were conducted using the strength domains and specific strengths as predictors. Specifically, using strength domains as predictors, separate multiple regression analyses were performed to predict the three criterion measures of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. For each of the criterion measures, the regression analysis was conducted using the ‘‘stepwise’’ procedure to select significant predictors. Table 6 summarizes the results of the regression analyses. It can be seen from Table 6 that the predictors of strength domains did significantly predict all three components of subjective well-being, and the amount of variance accounted for varied from a relatively modest amount (9%) for negative affect to a more substantial amount (41%) for positive affect. In general, the common significant predictor for all three components was the strength domain of courage, suggesting that teachers who endorsed emotional strengths to a greater degree were likely to have a higher level of subjective well-being. In addition, the greater endorsement of transcendence strengths seemed to add significantly to greater life satisfaction, and the greater endorsement of intellectual strengths (wisdom/knowledge) and civic strengths (justice) seemed to add significantly to the experience of more positive emotions.
Similar regression analyses were also conducted using specific strengths rather than strength domains as predictors. The results as summarized in Table 6 also indicated that the predictors of specific strengths significantly predicted all three components of subjective well-being, accounting for 15–46% of the variance in the criterion measures of subjective well-being. In general, the results indicated that specific strengths such as zest and hope could make important contribution to subjective well-being, suggesting that these specific strengths should be cultivated and promoted to lead to more satisfying life and the experience of more positive emotions and less negative emotions. 4. Discussion This study collected data from Chinese teachers and provided an opportunity to test the hierarchy of character strengths by higherorder CFA using structural equation modelling procedure. While the fit indices and the factor correlations among strength domains might suggest that more parsimonious models could be developed, the tenability of the tested hierarchical structure suggested that the 24 character strengths could be conceptualized to be subsumed under six strength domains. The distinctness of the character strengths and the strength domains also suggested that relevant empirical scores could be computed for further analyses to shed light on the relationships between strengths and subjective wellbeing. Consistent with past findings in non-Chinese settings (Park et al., 2004), the findings in this study served to expand past findings relating character strengths and life satisfaction and extend them to the specific population of Hong Kong prospective and in-service teachers in the Chinese cultural setting. Specifically, this sample of Chinese teachers, in comparison with the data
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reported by Park et al. (2004), seemed to report higher levels of strengths in the domains of humanity and transcendence, and higher levels of specific strengths in love, gratitude, teamwork, spirituality, and hope. It was understood that there could be discrepancies between what teachers endorsed and their actual thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and the extent to which endorsement corresponded or did not correspond to actual experiences had to await further investigation. Despite the possible discrepancies, it was plausible that these teachers who had to teach and help students did have higher levels of interpersonal strengths and strengths that connected them to higher meanings in educating and serving students. Their reported specific strengths also suggested that they valued close relationships, were thankful for the good things that happened to them, expected the best and worked to achieve it, worked well with colleagues, and believed in the higher purpose and meaning of life. Indeed, these character strengths were desirable characteristics in good teachers and should be cultivated and promoted in all teachers. Alternatively, one could also interpret the results as suggesting that people with these strengths were more likely to be drawn to the teaching profession. The present findings bear directly on whether specific strengths or particular strength domains could make important or salient contribution to the three components of subjective well-being. Consistent with the findings of Park et al. (2004), the present findings suggested that emotional strengths and ‘‘heart’’ strengths such as zest and hope were robust and consistent predictors of subjective well-being among Chinese teachers. These results also bear indirectly on how teachers could be helped to lead better, more satisfying and more fulfilling life to combat teacher burnout, the phenomenon that teachers lose enthusiasm after repeatedly coming across blockages and lack of support for their efforts (see Maslach, 2003). In this connection, one might suggest that the strength domains or specific strengths most strongly linked to subjective well-being could be the target for intervention. Arguably, character strengths are by their very nature, natural capacities within individuals that when cultivated and promoted, would allow individuals to achieve optimal functioning and performance, and lead individuals to lead better, more satisfying, and more fulfilling life (Linley & Harrington, 2006). Translated into the area of teacher education, a strength-based approach that aims to identify strengths and cultivate the practice of strengths such as emotional strengths might help teachers combat burnout. In other words, rather than focusing on alleviating symptoms of burnout, the strength-based approach could be more effective in focusing on the antithesis of burnout via the promotion of the experience of positive emotions and the building of positive strengths. This study certainly had many limitations. One obvious limitation as mentioned was the reliance on self-report to assess strengths such that there could be discrepancies between the teachers’ endorsement of strengths and the strengths that teachers actually had and used. For example, it was not known whether one who reported that one generally treated people fairly did treat people fairly and had the strength of fairness. Although it was generally assumed that self-reported thoughts, feelings and behaviours did correlate with actual thoughts, feelings and behaviours, it was understood that there was no one-to-one mapping. Thus, the extent to which self-report endorsement and actual experience is consistent or inconsistent under certain conditions warrants further investigation in future studies. Another major limitation of this study was the assumption that strengths as more stable character traits led to subjective wellbeing that could be more variable. It was understood that the present cross-sectional data could not address the question of causal relationships. Thus, although it seems natural to suggest that
teachers with a higher level of zest, for example, are more likely to experience more positive emotions, the alternative interpretation that the experience of more positive emotions may lead to higher levels of zest that suggest approaching life with excitement and energy cannot be ruled out. Indeed, bilateral influence might be more likely, as the increased practice of strengths could lead to an enhanced sense of well-being, and the feelings of well-being could also contribute to the increased use of strengths. Future studies using longitudinal designs might help establish the validity of the bilateral influence, determine the dominant direction of influence, or provide more compelling support to the findings that emotional strengths and specific strengths of zest and hope, for example, will lead to higher levels of subjective well-being and less vulnerability to burnout. Finally, sample selection could also be a major limitation. The convenient sample of a small number of Chinese teachers recruited via enrolment in courses in university teacher education programs could hardly be claimed to be representative of teachers in Hong Kong or in the Chinese cultural setting. Thus, cross-replication with larger and more representative samples should be helpful in establishing the generalizability of the present findings, and might provide further insight into the study on strengths and subjective well-being of teachers.
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Teaching and Teacher Education journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate
The hierarchy of strengths: Their relationships with subjective well-being among Chinese teachers in Hong Kong David W. Chan* Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 2 July 2008 Received in revised form 10 December 2008 Accepted 13 January 2009
This study investigated the hierarchy of strengths in a sample of 228 Chinese prospective and in-service teachers in Hong Kong. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for a hierarchical model with 24 first-order factors of strengths subsumed under six second-order factors of strength domains. Teachers who reported greater life satisfaction, experiencing more positive and less negative emotions tended to be those with higher levels of emotional strengths and strengths of hope and zest. Implications of the findings on the relationships between strengths and subjective well-being for helping teachers to promote and cultivate strengths to combat teacher stress and burnout are discussed. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Strengths Virtues Subjective well-being Chinese teachers Hong Kong
1. Introduction In recent years, a growing number of researchers in psychology are interested in studying positive aspects of health and well-being (see Aspinwall & Staudinger, 2003; Keyes & Haidt, 2003; Linley & Joseph, 2004; Seligman, 2002, 2003; Snyder & Lopez, 2002, 2007). In particular, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) have argued convincingly that traditional scientific psychology has focused disproportionately if not exclusively on distress and pathology, and have called for a shift of emphasis to the study of positive emotions, positive characters, and positive institutions as well as individual, community, and societal factors that contribute to a good and fulfilled life or a life worth living. In education, there is also a similar call for positive schooling that emphasizes the applications of the concepts or tenets of positive psychology to foster a positive learning environment (Snyder & Lopez, 2007). This emphasis is however not a new development. Many notable educators have paved the way for this approach. They include well-known philosophers such as Benjamin Franklin, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and John Dewey who focused on the strengths and assets of students (see Snyder & Lopez, 2007). Alfred Binet, noted for his concept of mental age,
* Tel.: þ852 2609 6947; fax: þ852 2603 6921. E-mail address: [email protected] 0742-051X/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.01.010
stressed the enhancement of student skills as much as the remediation of student weaknesses (Binet & Simon, 1905). Lewis Terman throughout his career explored the thinking of brilliant learners (Terman & Oden, 1947). Thus, the recent emphasis on the positives in education could be regarded as the continuation of an old and cherished tradition. Among the initiatives of the positive psychology movement, one major initiative was the development of a classification of strengths and virtues, which would provide a language and a framework for understanding areas of human excellence. This positive classification was envisioned to parallel the framework and language of disease and deficiency in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) for understanding psychopathology. Specifically, this initiative culminated in the Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths and Virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) that included 24 character strengths grouped under six overarching virtues claimed to be shared across culture and human history (Dahlsgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005). While the six virtues or strength domains are endorsed by almost every culture across the world, their manifestations are represented by strengths that could be grouped under 24 categories. Indeed, the 24 specific strengths representing these categories were identified by employing a strategy of piling on synonyms to capture the family resemblance of each strength and keeping to a manageable number the classified strengths that met 12 specified selection criteria (Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004).
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The six strength domains or virtues and the strengths grouped under these strength domains are: Wisdom and knowledge that encompass the five strengths of creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, and perspective, representing cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge; Courage that encompasses the four strengths of integrity, bravery, persistence, and zest, representing emotional strengths that involve the exercise of the will to accomplish goals; Humanity that encompasses the three strengths of kindness, love, and social intelligence, representing interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others; Justice that encompasses the three strengths of fairness, leadership, and teamwork, representing civic strengths that underlie healthy community life; Temperance that encompasses the four strengths of forgiveness, modesty, prudence, and self-regulation, representing strengths that protect against excess; and Transcendence that encompasses the five strengths of appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humour, and spirituality, representing strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning (see Peterson & Seligman, 2004). This VIA classification is intended to provide an integrative framework of strengths that allows strengths to be studied and understood in their complex relationships with each other and with a good and fulfilled life (Linley & Harrington, 2006). However, it is understood that the VIA classification should not be accepted as the final words on categories of strengths, and there might be character strengths that the VIA classification does not capture, given that there are other equally viable classifications of strengths (e.g., Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; Lopez et al., 2006; Smith, 2006). Thus, one might raise questions as to whether the classification is comprehensive enough, whether its inclusion and exclusion criteria are appropriate for strength identification, whether the classification yields an understanding of strengths that provides practical utility, and whether different strength profiles characterize individuals from different cultures as certain character strengths seem to be more evident and more valued in some countries than others (see Park et al., 2004; Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). Despite that there could be different views on how best to classify strengths and whether the VIA classification is relatively comprehensive and universal across cultures, it is generally recognized that a strength perspective that focuses on strengths instead of deficits and disabilities empowers individuals irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, religion, and ability level. Subsequent studies on individuals using their best or signature strengths in new ways as interventions suggested that such interventions could help them increase happiness and reduce depressive symptoms, at least for the 6 months under study (see Seligman et al., 2005). Thus, intervention efforts within the strength perspective could be efforts to help promote, enhance, or cultivate strengths as in strength-based counseling (Smith, 2006) or positive therapy (Joseph & Linley, 2005; Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006; Seligman et al., 2005), allowing individuals to recognize, develop, and celebrate their natural talents and abilities, and to recast their lives to do more of what they are best at doing for a more satisfying life. In this connection, it was of interest to investigate the relationships between various strengths and life satisfaction among individuals. For example, Park et al. (2004) have found that in their Internet samples of 5299 adults aged 35–40 years, the strengths of
hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity were found to relate consistently to life satisfaction. They also found that the relationship between strength and life satisfaction followed a monotonic increasing function, suggesting that the higher the level of strengths, the higher the level of life satisfaction, and that excess level of strength did not diminish life satisfaction. The investigations on strengths and strength-based interventions certainly have implications for teachers’ personal and professional development in teacher education On one hand, it can be argued that teachers and prospective teachers could become good or even better teachers if they identify and recognize their strengths and build on their natural talents in order that they could better help students to identify and develop their talents. Moreover, it can also be maintained that teachers who attend well to their own development and lead satisfying lives should be more able to help students in their whole-person development as well as lead satisfying lives. On the other hand, one would expect that teachers who strive to develop, build, and use their character strengths will become more resilient, more able to cope with stress, and less vulnerable to burnout. Studies on teacher burnout have often decomposed burnout into three components of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (see Maslach, 2003). Emotional exhaustion refers to the feeling of being emotionally overextended and depleted of one’s emotional resources due to the intense contact with students, other teachers and colleagues; depersonalization refers to negative attitudes and callous or excessively detached responses to students; and reduced personal accomplishment refers to a decline in one’s sense of competence and of successful achievement in one’s work in teaching. Invariably, teacher burnout has been studied from the clinical and pathological perspective in Hong Kong (see Chan & Hui, 1995) and around the world (see Maslach, 2003; Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999). Perhaps, this negative emphasis needs to be shifted to an emphasis on the positives under the positive psychology perspective, especially on intervention efforts to help teachers recognize, cultivate, and promote character strengths to combat burnout (Seligman et al., 2005, 2006). With the view to extend the inquiry on strengths to the Chinese educational context, the present study aimed to investigate the 24 strengths under the VIA classification in a sample of Hong Kong Chinese teachers. Specifically, the structure of the hierarchy of strengths was tested using higher-order maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis within the structural equation modelling approach (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993). In addition, like the study of Park et al. (2004), the present study with Hong Kong Chinese teachers focused on examining the different strengths and their relationships with life satisfaction. Going beyond this past study, the present study extended the study of the relationships between strengths and life satisfaction to those between strengths and subjective well-being that could be broadly conceptualized to include people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction (see Diener, 1984; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Robbins & Kliewer, 2000). Diener (1984), in his classic review of the subjective well-being literature, has found considerable empirical evidence to support a tripartite model of subjective well-being, referring to a cognitive aspect of life satisfaction, and an affective aspect encompassing the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect. Therefore, the present study also examined the relationships of different strengths with the satisfaction with life, positive affect, and negative affect as the three components of subjective well-being. In addition, gender differences and age-group differences on the six strength domains and the 24 specific strengths were explored. It was believed that this study of character strengths had important implications for teacher education, providing insights into how
D.W. Chan / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875
teachers could combat burnout through the cultivation and practice of strengths. 2. Method 2.1. Participants Two hundred and twenty-eight prospective and in-service Chinese teachers (71 men and 157 women) enrolled in the teacher education program for secondary school teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong participated voluntarily in a larger research project of which this study was a part. These participants were between the ages of 21 and 51 years (M ¼ 28.49, SD ¼ 6.47). Seventy-nine of them (31 men and 48 women) were prospective teachers with teaching experience only in teaching practice, 149 (40 men and 109 women) were in-service teachers with 1–28 years of teaching experience (M ¼ 5.57, SD ¼ 5.67). 2.2. Measures 2.2.1. The Strengths Inventory (TSI) The 72-item TSI was developed to assess the 24 strengths in this study. The development of the inventory of strengths was based on rational item writing followed by empirical testing (Jackson, 1970). The TSI items (three items for each strength) were first written in Chinese as first-person statements by the author based on the definitions or descriptions of the 24 strengths (e.g., Seligman et al., 2005). Two language teachers who were also graduate students were enlisted to examine and refine the statements to correspond closely to the descriptions of the strengths, and to conduct pilot testing of this initial version of the inventory with a few of their colleagues at their schools. Feedback from these teachers was used to guide the revision of the inventory, and any discrepancies in views on changes between the two teachers were resolved by discussion to arrive at the final items used for this study. In completing the Chinese TSI, participants responded by indicating their endorsement to each of the 72 statements using a five-point scale ranging from 1 (least descriptive of me) to 5 (most descriptive of me). 2.2.2. Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) The five-item SWLS (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) assesses general life satisfaction as the cognitive aspect of subjective well-being. It reveals the individual’s own judgment of his or her quality of life. The scale has demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.87), excellent 2-month test–retest reliability (r ¼ 0.82), and convergent and discriminant validity with other measures of subjective well-being, independent ratings of life satisfaction, self-esteem, clinical symptoms, neuroticism, and emotionality (Diener et al., 1985; Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996; Pavot & Diener, 1993). Since there is an available Chinese version of the scale that has been used with the Chinese population (e.g., Shek, Chan, & Lee, 1997), a bilingual version with items in both English and Chinese was administered to participants to ensure that participants fully understand the items. In completing the scale, participants were requested to indicate their agreement on a fivepoint scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A total score can be obtained by summing the five-item responses, with higher scores reflecting more satisfaction with life. 2.2.3. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) The PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) consists of two scales, one on positive affect and one on negative affect. Each of the scale contains 10 emotion adjectives which are rated to indicate the respondent’s general perception of the amount of time spent
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experiencing each emotion. The two scales are shown to be highly internal consistent (Cronbach’s a above 0.85), largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period (Watson et al., 1988). This study also used Chinese emotion adjectives equivalent to their corresponding English emotion adjectives. The 20 Chinese and 20 English emotion adjectives were made to appear together in the bilingual version to ensure that participants fully understand the emotion adjectives. In completing the scales, participants were requested to make their judgments of experiencing the emotions in general on a five-point scale: 1 (not at all), 2 (a little), 3 (moderately), 4 (quite a bit), and 5 (extremely). A total score on positive affect and one on negative affect can be obtained by summing the ratings on the relevant items. 2.3. Procedure Participants responded in groups of about 50 to 3 self-report scales assembled in a questionnaire. The three scales were the TSI, SWLS, and PANAS. All participants were assured that the data would be kept confidential and would be used for research purposes only. 3. Results 3.1. The hierarchy of strengths To explore whether the TSI items adequately reflected the intended hierarchical structure of six strength domains covering 24 strengths that encompassed 72 items as indicators of the strengths, the item responses of the 228 Chinese teachers were first intercorrelated to yield a 72-item covariance matrix, and the hierarchical model with 24 first-order factors and 6 second-order factors was tested by maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using LISREL 8.71 (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993, 2004). Specifically, the first-order factors were 24 factors with each factor defined by three indicators or items. The second-order factors were six factors with the first to the sixth factors defined by five strengths of wisdom and knowledge, four strengths of courage, three strengths of humanity, three strengths of justice, four strengths of temperance, and five strengths of transcendence, respectively. Since the model would be rejected by the c2 test statistic at a conventional alpha level if a large enough sample was used, and accepted if a small enough sample was used (Browne & Cudeck, 1993), a number of residual-based fit indices and comparison-based fit indices suggested by different researchers based on slightly different perspectives were employed to help determine whether the hypothesized models were well-fitting for these data, with a view that more confidence could be attached to the results if there was a convergence of fit across indices (e.g., Bentler, 1989; Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993; Steiger, 1990). Thus, apart from the chi-square statistic, the fit indices used included the Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA), the Root Mean Squared Residual (RMR) and the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (S-RMR), the Expected Cross-Validation Index (ECVI), the Goodness of Fit Index (GFI), the Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI), and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI). In general, an adequate fit is suggested by RMSEA, RMR and S-RMR values below or approaching 0.05, and by fit index values between 0.80 and 1.00, and a well-fitting model will have small ECVI value, suggesting that there is a high likelihood that the model will cross-validate across a similar-sized sample from the same population (see Byrne, 1998; Diamantopoulos & Siguaw, 2000). Prior to conducting the hierarchical analysis, it was deemed appropriate to assess the extent to which the first-order factor models of strength domains could be fitted to the data using items
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as indicators of specific strengths. In this regard, six separate CFAs were performed using the relevant sets of three items as indicators of the latent variables of specific strengths within each of the six strength domains. For example, in conducting a CFA for the strength domain of wisdom and knowledge, the relevant 15-item covariance matrix (3 items for each strength) was analyzed to test whether the data were adequately represented by the five-factor model defined by the factors of creativity, curiosity, openmindedness, love of learning, and perspective. Similarly, the CFA for the strength domain of justice would examine the three-factor solution defined by the factors of fairness, leadership, and teamwork using the relevant nine-item covariance matrix. The results of the six CFAs with the various fit indices are summarized in Table 1, which indicated that the six first-order models representing the six strength domains exhibited only generally mediocre fit to the data, with reasonably acceptable fit indices for the justice domain and relatively poor fit indices for the humanity domain. Although it might be possible to achieve better fit through deleting poor items in re-estimation, it was considered less desirable to define each strength factor by less than three items or combine strengths because of the deletion of items such that the original hierarchy of strengths could not be properly tested. Since the overall results suggested that the hypothesized structuring of individual strengths into their respective domains seemed to be tenable, it was considered that the hierarchy could be further tested using secondorder CFA. To explore whether the 24 specific strengths each defined by three indicators could be subsumed under six higher-order factors of strength domains, higher-order confirmatory factor analysis was performed using the 72-item covariance matrix to yield a factor solution of 24 specific strengths subsumed under six strength domains. The results of the analysis conducted to estimate all parameters simultaneously indicated reasonably acceptable fit as
represented by the single set of fit indices as shown in Table 1, with the exception of the poor absolute fit index of GFI, suggesting that the structure of the hierarchy of strengths could be regarded as tenable. The correlations among the second-order factors of strength domains indicated that there were substantial correlations relating humanity to courage, justice, and temperance, suggesting that these strength domains could be closely associated, and a more parsimonious model might be considered for future investigations. The first-order and second-order completely standardized solutions together with the second-order factor correlation matrix are summarized in Table 2. 3.2. The six strength domains Since the hierarchical structure of strengths was tenable based on the higher-order CFA, it was considered appropriate to score teachers’ responses to the TSI to yield 24 scores on 24 specific strengths and 6 global scores on 6 strength domains for further analyses. Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations, and measures of internal consistency of the six strength domain scales, the global scores being based on aggregating the relevant item responses in the respective strength domains. It can be seen that the coefficients alpha as indices of internal consistency of the six scales were moderately high (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.69–0.82). These six strength domain scores correlated substantially and significantly (p < 0.005) with each other (r ¼ 0.21–0.57). The level of mean scores on the six domains of strengths indicated that these teachers reported higher interpersonal and transcendental strengths (humanity and transcendence). Support for the differential level of endorsement could be gleaned from the one-way within-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA), treating the six strength domain scale scores as dependent measures. The ANOVA results with the multivariate test indicated that the overall differences among the six
Table 1 Summary of fit indices evaluating models of human strengths using maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (N ¼ 228).
c2 First-order factor model Wisdom and knowledge Independence model Five-factor model
1536.18 251.22*
Courage Independence model Four-factor model
1466.86 226.91*
df
Fit index RMSEA
RMR
S-RMR
GFI
NNFI
CFI
ECVI
105 80
– 0.097
– 0.053
– 0.076
– 0.871
– 0.853
– 0.888
6.899 1.459
66 48
– 0.128
– 0.071
– 0.085
– 0.857
– 0.829
– 0.876
6.568 1.264
Humanity Independence model Three-factor model
543.37 127.63**
36 24
– 0.138
– 0.068
– 0.102
– 0.889
– 0.715
– 0.810
2.473 0.747
Justice Independence model Three-factor model
732.01 44.02**
36 24
– 0.061
– 0.035
– 0.057
– 0.959
– 0.950
– 0.966
3.304 0.379
Temperance Independence model Four-factor model
630.32 121.38***
66 48
– 0.082
– 0.067
– 0.079
– 0.918
– 0.817
– 0.867
2.882 0.799
1369.21 218.12**
105 80
– 0.087
– 0.076
– 0.095
– 0.886
– 0.847
– 0.883
6.164 1.313
19319.30 4938.68*
2556 2445
– 0.067
– 0.073
– 0.097
– 0.623
– 0.853
– 0.859
85.741 23.369
Transcendence Independence model Five-factor model First-order and second-order factor model Independence model First- and second-order factor model (24 first order/6 second order)
Note. Fit indices are from LISREL analyses (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993). c2 ¼ Normal Theory Weighted Least Squares c2; RMSEA ¼ Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation; RMR ¼ Root Mean Squared Residual; S-RMR ¼ Standardized Root Mean Square Residual; GFI ¼ Goodness of Fit Index; NNFI ¼ Non-Normed Fit Index; CFI ¼ Comparative Fit Index; ECVI ¼ Expected Cross-Validation Index. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
D.W. Chan / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875
871
Table 2 Completely standardized solution of the hierarchy of strengths by maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (N ¼ 228). Loading of items on first-order factors as indicators of strength
First-order factor
Second-order factor
Item1
Item2
Item3
Strength
1
2
3
4
5
6
48 37 47 77 51 39 56 56 63 72 34 37 62 41 67 62 69 64 66 51 75 22 84 39
55 54 68 79 64 45 68 71 59 62 79 70 68 68 78 54 32 18 42 66 45 73 73 53
66 55 55 30 78 52 49 79 66 46 68 40 51 80 51 73 78 25 46 68 65 80 53 80
Creativity Curiosity Open-mindedness Love of learning Perspective Integrity Bravery Persistence Zest Kindness Love Social intelligence Fairness Leadership Teamwork Forgiveness Modesty Prudence Self-regulation Appreciation of beauty Gratitude Hope Humour Spirituality
81 87 91 69 73 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 99 83 91 88 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 78 59 73 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 51 88 93 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 63 33 77 99 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 53 99 85 33 42
Second-order factor correlation matrix Factor 1 (Wisdom/knowledge) Factor 2 (Courage) Factor 3 (Humanity) Factor 4 (Justice) Factor 5 (Temperance) Factor 6 (Transcendence)
58 46 36 43 60
84 56 64 52
86 80 76
65 45
59
Note. Decimals are omitted.
scores were significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.59, F (5, 223) ¼ 30.73, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.408. Since no particular pairs of scores were identified as providing theoretically more meaningful comparisons, all possible pairs of scores were compared. These follow-up paired ttests on all 15 possible pairs of scores indicated that 8 pairs were significantly different after controlling for family wise error rate across the 15 tests using the Bonferroni procedure, and t-values were evaluated at 0.05/15 or 0.0033 level of significance. In summary, these teachers reported higher levels of interpersonal and transcendental strengths (which did not differ significantly from each other) than emotional, civic, intellectual, and temperance strengths (which also did not differ significantly from each other). To explore whether there were significant gender differences and age-group differences in teachers’ endorsement of the six strength domains, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted using the six strength domains as dependent variables, and gender and age group (median split, 26 years or younger
vs. older than 26 years) as grouping variables. The results indicated that the overall age-group main effect and the gender/age-group interaction effects were nonsignificant, but the gender main effect was significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.87, F (6, 219) ¼ 5.39, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.129. Subsequent univariate ANOVA on each of the strength domain scores was conducted as a follow-up test to the significant MANOVA gender main effect. Using the Bonferroni procedure to adjust for multiple tests, each ANOVA was evaluated at the value of 0.05/6 or 0.0083. The results indicated that female teachers endorsed a significantly higher level of transcendental strengths than did male teachers, F (1, 224) ¼ 10.31, p ¼ 0.002, with a modest effect size, partial h2 ¼ 0.044. 3.3. The 24 specific strengths Since the general results of analyses conducted on global strength domain scores might not reveal important differences
Table 3 Means, standard deviations, and internal consistency measures of strength domains (N ¼ 228). Strength domain
Number of items
M
SD
a
Significant group differences
Humanity Transcendence Courage Justice Wisdom/knowledge Temperance
9 15 12 9 15 12
11.70 11.46 10.97 10.90 10.85 10.79
1.35 1.36 1.51 1.34 1.30 1.31
0.69 0.76 0.82 0.75 0.81 0.70
– F>M – – – –
Note. Strength domain scores (averaged across strengths) are in the range of 3–15, and are arranged in descending order of magnitude. a is the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency measure. The significant group differences are the results from univariate analyses of variance as a follow-up of the multivariate analysis. F ¼ female teachers; M ¼ male teachers.
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D.W. Chan / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875
Table 4 Means, standard deviations, and internal consistency measures of specific strengths (N ¼ 228). Strength
Number of items
M
SD
a
Significant group differences
Love Gratitude Teamwork Spirituality Hope Integrity Kindness Social intelligence Forgiveness Open-mindedness Humour Persistence Zest Curiosity Modesty Appreciation of beauty Love of learning Perspective Prudence Leadership Fairness Self-regulation Creativity Bravery
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
12.39 12.03 11.86 11.64 11.44 11.41 11.37 11.34 11.32 11.28 11.21 11.21 11.11 11.08 11.03 11.00 10.97 10.67 10.49 10.46 10.39 10.32 10.23 10.14
1.76 1.97 1.61 2.40 1.85 1.88 1.81 1.82 1.81 1.68 2.03 1.96 1.86 1.74 2.03 2.31 1.92 1.94 1.91 1.85 1.83 2.04 1.87 2.09
0.58 0.63 0.69 0.54 0.56 0.47 0.57 0.42 0.65 0.57 0.74 0.72 0.65 0.44 0.58 0.63 0.61 0.70 0.40 0.61 0.61 0.54 0.58 0.60
F>M F>M – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Note. Strength scale scores are in the range of 3–15, and are arranged in descending order of magnitude. a is the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency measure. The significant group differences are the results from univariate analyses of variance as a follow-up of the multivariate analysis. F ¼ female teachers; M ¼ male teachers.
among individual specific strengths, similar analyses were conducted on the 24 specific strengths. Table 4 shows the means and standard deviations, and measures of internal consistency of the 24 specific strength scales, the scores being based on aggregating the three relevant item responses in the respective specific strengths. It can be seen that the coefficients alpha as indices of internal consistency of the 24 scales were of moderate values (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.40–0.74), relatively lower than the values for the global strength domains, as could be expected from the small number of items in each scale. The correlations between pairs of specific strengths were highly variable, ranging from r ¼ 0.11 to r ¼ 0.59. The level of mean scores on the 24 specific strengths indicated that these teachers reported higher endorsement on love, gratitude, teamwork, spirituality, and hope, and lower endorsement on fairness, self-regulation, creativity, and bravery. Support for the differential level of endorsement could be gleaned from the oneway within-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA), treating the 24 specific strength scores as dependent measures. The ANOVA results with the multivariate test indicated that the overall differences among the 24 scores were significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.26, F (23, 205) ¼ 25.91, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.744. Since no particular pairs of scores were identified as providing theoretically more meaningful comparisons, all possible pairs of scores were compared. These follow-up paired t-tests on all 276 possible pairs of scores indicated that 148 pairs (53.62%) were significantly different after controlling for family wise error rate using the Bonferroni procedure, and t-values were evaluated at 0.05/276 or 0.00018 level of significance. In summary, the specific strength of love was reported to be at the top of endorsement, followed by gratitude, teamwork and spirituality (which did not differ significantly from each other), and the specific strengths of fairness, self-regulation, creativity, and bravery (which did not differ significantly from each other) were reported to be at the bottom of endorsement. A MANOVA was also conducted to explore significant gender differences and age-group differences in teachers’ endorsement of the 24 specific strengths. Similar to the findings with the six strength domains, the results indicated that the overall age-group main effect and the gender/age-group interaction effects were
nonsignificant, but the gender main effect was significant, Wilks’ L ¼ 0.69, F (24, 201) ¼ 3.74, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.309. Subsequent univariate ANOVA on each of the specific strength scores was conducted as a follow-up test to the significant MANOVA gender main effect. Using the Bonferroni procedure to adjust for multiple tests, each ANOVA was evaluated at the value of 0.05/24 or 0.0021. The results indicated that significant differences favouring female teachers were found only for two specific strengths, namely love, F (1, 224) ¼ 12.86, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.054 and gratitude, F (1, 224) ¼ 20.78, p < 0.001, partial h2 ¼ 0.085, and the effect sizes for both differences were relatively modest. 3.4. Predicting subjective well-being using strengths and strength domains To examine the relationships between strengths (specific strengths and strength domains) and subjective well-being, teachers’ responses to the SWLS and PANAS were scored to yield scores on life satisfaction (5 items; M ¼ 16.09, SD ¼ 3.68; Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.83), positive affect (10 items; M ¼ 34.68, SD ¼ 5.15; Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.76), and negative affect (10 items; M ¼ 24.33, SD ¼ 7.19; Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.87), with life satisfaction correlating substantially and significantly (p < 0.001) with positive affect (r ¼ 0.28) and negative affect (r ¼ 0.41), and with the two affect scores correlating minimally with each other (r ¼ 0.07). Analyses involving the PANAS scores were based on 227 teachers due to missing data. Table 5 shows the correlations between strengths (specific strengths and strength domains) and each of the three components of subjective well-being. Focusing on the strength domains, it can be seen from Table 5 that all strength domains except temperance correlated most highly with positive affect, and all strength domains except intellectual strengths (wisdom and knowledge) correlated substantially with life satisfaction. The negative correlations of strength domains with negative affect were in general relatively less substantial, the exception being the substantial negative correlation between emotional strengths (courage) and negative affect. Focusing on individual specific strengths, the patterns of correlations between
D.W. Chan / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 867–875 Table 5 Correlation between strengths and subjective well-being (N ¼ 228)
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Table 6 Summary of multiple regression analyses for the prediction of the components of subjective well-being using separate strength domains and specific strengths (N ¼ 228).
Specific strengths
Correlation with Life satisfaction
Positive affect
Negative affect
Wisdom/knowledge Creativity Curiosity Open-mindedness Love of learning Perspective
14* 04 09 04 17** 13
55*** 44*** 40*** 38*** 37*** 36***
16* 01 07 15* 22*** 12
Courage Integrity Bravery Persistence Zest
33*** 25*** 22*** 19** 39***
54*** 29*** 50*** 32*** 54***
30*** 18** 25*** 20** 30***
Humanity Kindness Love Social intelligence
32*** 23*** 22*** 27***
42*** 30*** 31*** 34***
14* 11 09 11
Justice Fairness Leadership Teamwork
27*** 15* 22*** 24***
42*** 24*** 35*** 39***
10 12 01 12
Temperance Forgiveness Modesty Prudence Self-regulation
25*** 20** 08 05 35***
15* 18** 03 04 28***
Transcendence Appreciation of beauty Gratitude Hope Humour Spirituality
34*** 20** 30*** 45*** 07 11
42*** 32*** 29*** 36*** 29*** 12
18** 20** 19** 07 17* 18** 04 12 30*** 01 12
Variable
B
SE B
Strength domains as predictors Satisfaction with life Transcendence 0.63 Courage 0.55
b
0.19 0.17
0.23*** 0.23***
1.33 0.97 0.68
0.24 0.22 0.22
0.34*** 0.28*** 0.18**
1.43
0.30
0.30***
Specific strengths as predictors Satisfaction with life Hope 0.74 Self-regulation 0.39
0.12 0.11
0.37*** 0.22***
0.84 0.72 0.72 0.47
0.17 0.16 0.17 0.16
0.30*** 0.26*** 0.23*** 0.19**
0.69 0.79 0.60
0.28 0.28 0.22
Positive affect Wisdom/knowledge Courage Justice Negative affect Courage
Positive affect Zest Creativity Teamwork Bravery Negative affect Hope Zest Modesty
R2
F
0.15
20.36***
0.41
51.76***
0.09
22.02***
0.24
35.68***
0.46
47.82***
0.15
12.76***
0.18* 0.20** 0.17**
Note. Stepwise procedures were used with criteria based on probability of F to enter 0.01 and probability of F to remove 0.05. Data involving positive affect and negative affect are based on n ¼ 227 because of missing data. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
strength domains and the components of subjective well-being generally applied to specific strengths. Notably, all emotional strengths (integrity, bravery, persistence, and zest), love of learning, forgiveness, self-regulation, and hope were found to associate substantially with all three components of subjective well-being, whereas the specific strengths of prudence and spirituality did not correlate substantially with any of the three components. To examine more closely how the strengths and strength domains could contribute to each component of subjective wellbeing, a series of multiple linear regression analyses were conducted using the strength domains and specific strengths as predictors. Specifically, using strength domains as predictors, separate multiple regression analyses were performed to predict the three criterion measures of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. For each of the criterion measures, the regression analysis was conducted using the ‘‘stepwise’’ procedure to select significant predictors. Table 6 summarizes the results of the regression analyses. It can be seen from Table 6 that the predictors of strength domains did significantly predict all three components of subjective well-being, and the amount of variance accounted for varied from a relatively modest amount (9%) for negative affect to a more substantial amount (41%) for positive affect. In general, the common significant predictor for all three components was the strength domain of courage, suggesting that teachers who endorsed emotional strengths to a greater degree were likely to have a higher level of subjective well-being. In addition, the greater endorsement of transcendence strengths seemed to add significantly to greater life satisfaction, and the greater endorsement of intellectual strengths (wisdom/knowledge) and civic strengths (justice) seemed to add significantly to the experience of more positive emotions.
Similar regression analyses were also conducted using specific strengths rather than strength domains as predictors. The results as summarized in Table 6 also indicated that the predictors of specific strengths significantly predicted all three components of subjective well-being, accounting for 15–46% of the variance in the criterion measures of subjective well-being. In general, the results indicated that specific strengths such as zest and hope could make important contribution to subjective well-being, suggesting that these specific strengths should be cultivated and promoted to lead to more satisfying life and the experience of more positive emotions and less negative emotions. 4. Discussion This study collected data from Chinese teachers and provided an opportunity to test the hierarchy of character strengths by higherorder CFA using structural equation modelling procedure. While the fit indices and the factor correlations among strength domains might suggest that more parsimonious models could be developed, the tenability of the tested hierarchical structure suggested that the 24 character strengths could be conceptualized to be subsumed under six strength domains. The distinctness of the character strengths and the strength domains also suggested that relevant empirical scores could be computed for further analyses to shed light on the relationships between strengths and subjective wellbeing. Consistent with past findings in non-Chinese settings (Park et al., 2004), the findings in this study served to expand past findings relating character strengths and life satisfaction and extend them to the specific population of Hong Kong prospective and in-service teachers in the Chinese cultural setting. Specifically, this sample of Chinese teachers, in comparison with the data
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reported by Park et al. (2004), seemed to report higher levels of strengths in the domains of humanity and transcendence, and higher levels of specific strengths in love, gratitude, teamwork, spirituality, and hope. It was understood that there could be discrepancies between what teachers endorsed and their actual thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and the extent to which endorsement corresponded or did not correspond to actual experiences had to await further investigation. Despite the possible discrepancies, it was plausible that these teachers who had to teach and help students did have higher levels of interpersonal strengths and strengths that connected them to higher meanings in educating and serving students. Their reported specific strengths also suggested that they valued close relationships, were thankful for the good things that happened to them, expected the best and worked to achieve it, worked well with colleagues, and believed in the higher purpose and meaning of life. Indeed, these character strengths were desirable characteristics in good teachers and should be cultivated and promoted in all teachers. Alternatively, one could also interpret the results as suggesting that people with these strengths were more likely to be drawn to the teaching profession. The present findings bear directly on whether specific strengths or particular strength domains could make important or salient contribution to the three components of subjective well-being. Consistent with the findings of Park et al. (2004), the present findings suggested that emotional strengths and ‘‘heart’’ strengths such as zest and hope were robust and consistent predictors of subjective well-being among Chinese teachers. These results also bear indirectly on how teachers could be helped to lead better, more satisfying and more fulfilling life to combat teacher burnout, the phenomenon that teachers lose enthusiasm after repeatedly coming across blockages and lack of support for their efforts (see Maslach, 2003). In this connection, one might suggest that the strength domains or specific strengths most strongly linked to subjective well-being could be the target for intervention. Arguably, character strengths are by their very nature, natural capacities within individuals that when cultivated and promoted, would allow individuals to achieve optimal functioning and performance, and lead individuals to lead better, more satisfying, and more fulfilling life (Linley & Harrington, 2006). Translated into the area of teacher education, a strength-based approach that aims to identify strengths and cultivate the practice of strengths such as emotional strengths might help teachers combat burnout. In other words, rather than focusing on alleviating symptoms of burnout, the strength-based approach could be more effective in focusing on the antithesis of burnout via the promotion of the experience of positive emotions and the building of positive strengths. This study certainly had many limitations. One obvious limitation as mentioned was the reliance on self-report to assess strengths such that there could be discrepancies between the teachers’ endorsement of strengths and the strengths that teachers actually had and used. For example, it was not known whether one who reported that one generally treated people fairly did treat people fairly and had the strength of fairness. Although it was generally assumed that self-reported thoughts, feelings and behaviours did correlate with actual thoughts, feelings and behaviours, it was understood that there was no one-to-one mapping. Thus, the extent to which self-report endorsement and actual experience is consistent or inconsistent under certain conditions warrants further investigation in future studies. Another major limitation of this study was the assumption that strengths as more stable character traits led to subjective wellbeing that could be more variable. It was understood that the present cross-sectional data could not address the question of causal relationships. Thus, although it seems natural to suggest that
teachers with a higher level of zest, for example, are more likely to experience more positive emotions, the alternative interpretation that the experience of more positive emotions may lead to higher levels of zest that suggest approaching life with excitement and energy cannot be ruled out. Indeed, bilateral influence might be more likely, as the increased practice of strengths could lead to an enhanced sense of well-being, and the feelings of well-being could also contribute to the increased use of strengths. Future studies using longitudinal designs might help establish the validity of the bilateral influence, determine the dominant direction of influence, or provide more compelling support to the findings that emotional strengths and specific strengths of zest and hope, for example, will lead to higher levels of subjective well-being and less vulnerability to burnout. Finally, sample selection could also be a major limitation. The convenient sample of a small number of Chinese teachers recruited via enrolment in courses in university teacher education programs could hardly be claimed to be representative of teachers in Hong Kong or in the Chinese cultural setting. Thus, cross-replication with larger and more representative samples should be helpful in establishing the generalizability of the present findings, and might provide further insight into the study on strengths and subjective well-being of teachers.
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