Elizabeth Dowling

ABSTRACT Person-specific and variable-focused assessments represent two distinct approaches to research, each offering valuable insights from different standpoints. However, the focus of character studies has mostly been on variable-focused assessments that measure between-person differences, leaving the specific trajectories of character development and the relation among character constructs at the within-person level unexplored. In this article, we studied youth character development and the relation among character constructs at both the between- and within-person levels using an intensive longitudinal data set from the Compassion International (CI) Study of Positive Youth Development in Uganda. Participants were 200 CI-enrolled youth (49.5% female, M age = 12.13, SD age = 2.19) who completed a survey of character constructs across 15 weeks. Results showed that although between-person level findings were consistent with previous variable-focused studies, within-person findings supported the specificity and heterogeneity in character development and of the relation among character constructs. We discuss implications regarding the usefulness and necessity of person-specific assessment for character education and development programs.

ABSTRACT Youth development programs in the majority world are increasingly taking a strengths-based, positive youth development (PYD) approach to promoting youth thriving. Although character strengths are believed to support well-being, more evidence from majority-world contexts is needed. Using data derived from the Compassion International Study of PYD in Uganda (n = 606, M age = 12.5 years, SD age = 2.3, 50.2% female), we validated a measurement model of eight specific character strengths—goal selection, optimization, and compensation; hopeful future expectations; transcendence; contribution/generosity; forgiveness; love; gratitude; and purpose—and assessed their relations to well-being. Character strengths were robustly and positively correlated with well-being, with gratitude, love, and hopeful future expectations consistently demonstrating the strongest correlations with well-being. Both consistency and differences in interrelations emerged across subgroups. These findings provide initial evidence of an ecologically valid and psychometrically strong measurement model that can be used in majority-world countries for assessing character strengths and their relation to well-being and thriving in PYD programs.

ABSTRACT Should forgiveness be considered a civic virtue that promotes peace and justice following injustice? In the aftermath of conflicts as severe as state-sponsored genocide, how can relationships be restored, communities reconciled, and justice achieved? We interviewed 15 adults in Rwanda—survivors of the 1994 genocide, nominated as exemplars for their youth-serving roles in their communities and their experiences with forgiving the traumas of the genocide—about their approaches to conflict resolution, their ideas about justice and forgiveness, and their community work. Phenomenological analysis supported considering forgiveness as a civic virtue, as exemplars described a restorative approach to conflict in which justice facilitates, and is completed by, forgiveness. Implications for education emerged from exemplars’ accounts, including describing a process of conflict resolution that works toward peace and justice by means of listening, uncovering the truth, acting impartially, encouraging apology and forgiveness, advising for solutions, restoring rights and relationships, and fulfilling justice.