Enhancing Happiness and Self-esteem through VIA Character Strengths: A Pre-Post Intervention Study

Description

Harsha Joshi (Department of Psychology, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan)

This study focuses on enhancing happiness and self-esteem using Character Strengths based intervention in pre-post experimental research. Adolescents aged 16-18 years from Jaipur locale were selected using purposive sampling. After determining their top three character characteristics through the VIA- Youth survey, participants took baseline happiness and self-esteem tests. A strength based intervention was given for a period of 15 days with the intention to help them apply their distinctive abilities in everyday situations. Assessments were carried out after the intervention, and paired t-tests were used to analyse the results. The findings showed that after the intervention, there was a notable increase in both happiness and self-esteem. The results revealed a significant increase from pre-test (M = 136.60, SD = 11.51) and (M = 71.80, SD = 6.32) to post-test (M = 141.87, SD = 10.59), t(14) = 3.49, p = .004, d = 0.90 and (M = 76.13, SD = 5.33), t(14) = 6.06, p < .001, d = 1.57 for both happiness and self-esteem respectively, validating the efficacy of character strength-based interventions in fostering students’ psychological health and well-being.