Character Strengths Afforded by Arts Engagement During Adolescence: The Development and Validation of the Creative Artistic Activities Strengths Affordances Scale (CAASA scale)

Research into the impact of arts engagement on young people, particularly with regard to their well-being, is seeing ever-growing interest. However, it has been argued that methodological limitations, particularly a shortage of reliable measurement tools, may be undermining progress in this research area. Character strengths are established in the literature as a collection of positive traits—displayed through thoughts, feelings, and behavior—that are related to positive development and enhanced mental well-being outcomes. Motivated by the possibility that character strengths that are exercised during arts activities may, at least in-part, account for the positive well-being outcomes that have been associated with such activities, this article outlines the development and evaluation of a novel self-report questionnaire. Specifically, following exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis on data collected from two separate samples of young people, we present a final 15-item scale for measuring patterns of character strengths exercised during arts activities. Our scale, which comprises self-belief, social competence and curiosity and exploration, as key groups of strengths exercised during arts engagement shows reliability, convergent validity, and evidence of relative independence from trait-level measurements. Following presentation of the scale’s development and validation, the current article discusses key ways in which the scale can be beneficial in both research and practice: from helping to clarify the precise mechanisms by which arts engagement promotes adolescent development and well-being, to supporting arts educators and practitioners that have an interest in leveraging arts engagement in this way.