Learnings from the #StrengthsProject2019 survey results

In January 2019, I launched the #StrengthsProject2019 with a purpose to explore how people build their inner strengths throughout their lives, and whether they use them intentionally to get through challenges.

During a four months period I was collecting responses to a short Strengths Survey. I was overwhelmed by mini-stories that people were willing to share. Many of these stories were deeply personal, and reflected struggles with relationships, identity, career challenges, dealing with major health issues and other life changing events.

The key research findings include:

  • Majority of respondents were not very aware of their character strengths (27% of respondents are ‘very aware’ and 11,5% are ‘fully aware’ of their character strengths)
  • Only 19% of respondents were consciously using their character strengths to cope with life challenges
  • There was confusion between Character Strengths, Professional Strengths and Coping Strategies which suggests low awareness of character strengths concept.
  • The survey helped to identify the strengths used in difficult situations rather than gain insights into the process of strengths’ development.
Discussion of findings

A nine-question questionnaire was designed and it included closed and open questions, determining the collection of qualitative and quantitative data.

Quantitative analysis clearly suggested that majority of people are not very aware of their character strengths (58% somewhat aware and only 11% fully aware).

Even a lower proportion of responents (19%) are using their strengths consciously or intentionally; 50% agreed with the statement “I consciously use my strengths to cope with life’s challenges effectively”, 19% said they Strongly Agree and 23% were not sure of their answer.

Open questions yielded qualitative data and a glimpse into the respondents’ perception of most challenging times of their life their strengths that enabled them to overcome those challenges.

The answers to qualitative questions were coded and grouped into clusters.

Answers to Question 2 regarding the ‘most challenging times of life’ were grouped into 5 clusters:

  • Health (diagnosis of illness, sick family member),
  • Parenting & Family (motherhood, dealing with childhood traumas),
  • Relationships (separation),
  • Career & Life change (work related stress, job uncertainty, moving countries), and
  • Personal dilemmas (ethical and integrity decisions).

Due to the overlapping meanings, the attribution of verbatims to the clusters is arbitrary. For example, it is challenging to assign a mention of child illness to the ‘family’ or ‘health’ cluster exclusively.

Question 3 asked respondents ‘Which traits of your character had enabled you to overcome this difficulty?’ Responses varied, however, the key meanings were evident, hence, ‘a positive outlook’, ‘positivity’ and ‘optimism’ entries were clustered into ‘Optimism’, while ‘Perseverance’, ‘obstinacy’ and ‘not giving in’ into ‘Resilience’. The key strengths areas most frequently identified by respondents were Optimism, Resilience, Faith, and Courage.

When the ‘character traits’ question (Q2) was paraphrased into “What is your greatest inner strength you can rely on?” (Q6) it yielded inconsistent responses. Respondents listed ‘professionalism’, ‘reading’, ‘hard work’ or described actions or activities they engage in (such as ‘Reading’, ‘Self-talk’, ‘Thinking about people who love me’, etc.). This suggests confusion between Character strengths, professional strengths and coping behaviour.

The reason for this could be that the concept of character strengths is relatively new. The strengths approach is based on Peterson and Seligman’s work on character strengths (2004). The authors identified 24 character strengths classified under six virtues, and developed a self-report inventory (Values in Action-Inventory of Strengths) to examine those 24 strengths.

However, character strengths testing is not widely adopted by organisations, rather, they mostly administer employees’ psychometric profiling using DiSK, MBTI or EQ instruments. This may explain why StrengthsProject2019 participants demonstrated a limited vocabulary in describing their strengths or attributes. It appears that Talent (professional) strengths (for example, ‘communicating’, ‘professionalism’, ‘organisation’) and Character strengths (‘courage’, ‘resilience’, ‘empathy’ and ‘compassion’) descriptors are used interchangeably.

It is reasonable to hypothesize that due to a low awareness of character strengths inventory, many people may fail to identify, define and consciously apply them for the maintaining their own emotional wellness.

Limitations

The purpose of the research was exploratory. Research design was based on a small non-probability sampling (n<200), broadly defined research population and a self-administered 9-question instrument consisting of scaling (5 point Likert scale) and open ended questions. Classification data (gender, age, income) was not collected except the country of residence. Frequency tabulation was used to process qualitative data, and responses to open questions were coded to derive collective meanings. The research design proved to be limiting for drawing valid insights or measuring correlations, and further research would be required to validate the findings. Qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews or focus groups would be recommended to gain an in-depth understanding of the development of inner strengths in individuals.