My name is Armaou Maria. Iʼd like to inform you about my research project on the relationship between the strengths of character and subjective well being of secondary school teachers that is being undertaken as part of my MSc degree in Occupational  Psychology; within the Institute of Work, Health & Organisations (I-WHO), which is a postgraduate institute of applied psychology at the University of Nottingham.
(supervisor: Dr. Niegel Hunt)

You'll find attached the ethics approval form I received from my department,

Till August 15, there will be a two-part on-line survey, in which secondary school teachers who volunteer to participate need to complete: a) the VIA  Signature Strengths Survey and b) two brief questionnaires regarding their subjective well-being and job characteristics. This will take approximately 35 minutes.

In short,  the aim of this research is to explore the occupational pattern of character strengths, how they are related to life satisfaction, and how parameters of teachers' job affect this relationship.

Participants, also.  will be able to get immediate feedback on their top 5 Strengths

Participation is entirely voluntary and all responses will be confidential and be used for research purposes only.

The target population of this research has been primarily UK  secondary school teachers BUT  it's been expanded to include generally  secondary school teachers.

 

 In order to participate in this survey you only have to visit the following web site address:


  http://www.onlinepsychresearch.co.uk/pos.htm     (part 1 & part 2!!)

or alternatively


a)  http://www.viasurvey.org/ (Official website: http://www.viastrengths.org/TakeVIASurvey/tabid/55/Default.aspx)
    (RESEARCH CODE: MAR002)



b) https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Ka63EM_2frczed3O9CRw6nOQ_3d_3d

a) Participants' responses in the first part of the survey are expected to reveal a main theme-pattern (of 5 strengths) of the strengths in this occupational group. This assessment is carried out through the VIA Strengths Survey. The official administration of the questionnaire is carried out through the VIA Institute, but it will be used only by me; as I've been given the research code MAR002.

For this part, participants need to FULLY complete a free registration page, creating a username and a personal password and entering in the LAST tab of this registration page the research code: MAR002. As username they should use an e-mail address.
At the end of this page you can find the "privacy policy" of the institute.
NO IDENTIFIABLE DETAILS WILL BE SHARED (e,g. name & e-mail) and I'll only get demographic information: age, sex and country and participants' responses to the questionnaire.
ALL RESPONSES WILL BE CONFIDENTIAL AND USED FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY.
This profile will allow participants get IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK on their strengths.

b) Participants' responses in the second part of the survey will allow me examine the relationship between this pattern of strengths and the levels of life satisfaction and if perceptions of job characteristics affect this relationship.

No login is required

SHORT BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Research shows that the strengths of zest, gratitude, love, hope and curiosity are most strongly associated with life satisfaction (Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Park, Peterson & Seligman, 2004) in a large variety of occupations. Additionally, women and older people often score higher in strengths. What is more, character strengths are often divided into “tonic” and “phasic”. The former, such as curiosity, zest and kindness, are displayed on a steady basis, while the latter, such as teamwork and bravery, according to the demands of specifiable situations (Park & Peterson, 2003).
Furthermore, certain strengths are appreciated in a much different way among different occupational groups.
For example, strengths of humanity, such as love, kindness and social intelligence, have been found to contribute to satisfaction with work that explicitly involves other people, such as teaching (Peterson and Park, 2006) Apart from this though, it depends on whether he or she is actually “enabled” to do it as a part of his or her job (Park & Petersen , 2003).



I'd appreciate if you could circulate this information to your colleagues that may be interested in participating. This post is a call for participants as I've been contacting secondary schools during the last month but the response rate is still low.

For any additional information about the research you can contact me directly at the e-mail addresses: lwxma2@nottingham.ac.uk or vavel7@yahoo.gr    or you may be interested the Google group of teachers' character strengths:

  http://groups.google.com/group/ipp-teachers-character-strengths-and-well-being
                      

Thanks for your interest in this research and I'm awaiting to hear for your comments, questions or ideas!!

 

Regards,

Armaou Maria