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Peterson & Seligman's model of character strengths and virtues is the basis for the "growing up strong" scale used in this work. The objectives were to determine the psychometric properties, to compare these strengths according to sex and age, and to specify which of these predict psychological wellbeing. Instrumental, cross-sectional, descriptive and non-experimental research involving 257 adolescents from Montevideo. The findings confirmed factorial and convergent validity of the scale and showed internal consistency values of 0.91. Women scored higher on curiosity (Z = 2.81, p<0.01), perspective (Z = 3.97, p<0.001), kindness (Z = 3.20, p<0.01), love (Z = 4.09, p<0.001) and equity (Z = 3.33, p<0.01), while men scored higher on enthusiasm (Z = 3.35, p<0.01) and leadership (Z = 2.38, p<0.05). Differences according to age were found in persistence (H = 8.80, p<0.05), teamwork (H = 9.51, p<0.05), prudence (H = 13.19, p<0.01) and self-regulation (H = 11.61, p<0.01). Strengths such as creativity (OR = 2.38, p<0.001), courage (OR = 2.05, p<0.001), kindness (OR = 3.48, p<0.001) and gratitude (OR = 2.83, p<0.001) predicted high scores of psychological well-being, correctly classifying 89.92% of the subjects. Similar results were found in the other dimensions of this construct. It is concluded: (a) the "growing up strong" scale presents adequate psychometric properties that suggest its use to measure the construct in adolescents; (b) there are differences in some character strengths according to sex and age; and (c) the promotional role of character strengths in psychological wellbeing is verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "growing up strong" scale is based on Peterson y Seligman's (2004) theoretical model of the character strengths and virtues. As it's a recent proposal, it lacks formal psychometric studies to support its use. The aim of this work was to determine the psychometric properties of this scale in a sample of university students from Maracaibo. It's an instrumental Investigation which involved 967 students. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis validate the underlying theoretical structure of six factors. In addition, high indexes of internal consistency were found, as well as positive correlations with self-esteem, self-efficacy, psychological well-being, life satisfaction and optimism; and negative correlations with pessimism. These results constitute evidence of reliability and factorial, convergent and discriminant validity. It's concluded that the "growing up strong" scale can be a short, useful and economical alternative to evaluate the construct both in basic and applied research. Future studies are recommended that will continue to provide evidence about the operation of the instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]