Character strengths and well-being of adolescents: A comparative analysis

Pages: 1934-1938
Shailja Sharma (Department of Psychology, Banwari Lal Jindal Suiwala College, Tosham, Haryana)

Today’s youth is striving for his identity, facing new problems everyday and finding optimal functioning very tough. Positive Psychology emphasizes the role of identification and application of strengths in the life of an individual for its overall growth. Strengths may have different manifestations in different cultures. Present study aimed to explore the character strength and well-being pattern of adolescents. The current study was conducted amongst 240 students of 11th and 12th grade (120 males & 120 females) belonging to urban and rural backgrounds, falling within the age group of 15-17 years. The sample was recruited through incidental purposive sampling from different schools of Bhiwani and Hisar districts of Haryana. ‘T’ test was employed to study the difference between means. Result of comparison between male-female adolescents reveals that female outscored their counterparts on honesty, kindness, fairness and forgiveness whereas males scored higher on curiosity, zest and hope. When compared on rural and urban dimension, rural adolescents were found significantly high on critical thinking, social intelligence, persistence, prudence, self regulation and gratitude; urban adolescents scored significantly high only on strength of appreciation of beauty. The results pertaining to well being of the subjects reveal that male scored higher than females, no significant difference was found between scores of urban and rural adolescents.