P. Alex Linley, Nicky Garcea, Jonathan Hill, Gurpal Minhas, Emma Trenier & Janet Willars

Objectives: Many coaching psychologists use strengths approaches in their practice. The current study set out to develop a conceptualisation of what is meant by strengthspotting, as well as to identify different domains of strengthspotting. The aim was to develop and validate a Strengthspotting Scale that could be used by researchers for future inquiry, and by practitioners for the self-assessment of their own strengthspotting preferences and capabilities.

Design: A Strengthspotting Scale item pool of 50 items was developed by six strengths experts and used for initial data collection. An online survey was used to collect data on the newly-developed Strengthspotting Scale, together with measures of personality, optimism, positive and negative affect, and strengths knowledge for concurrent validation.

Method: Data were collected from 456 respondents. Analyses used included exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation, correlation analysis and multivariate analysis of variance.

Results: A 20-item Strengthspotting Scale with five subscales assessing the Ability, Emotional, Frequency, Application and Motivation domains of strengthspotting was developed and validated. All subscales demonstrated very good internal consistency reliability and concurrent validity with extraversion, agreeableness, optimism, positive affect and strengths knowledge. There were no gender differences, but small positive associations between strengthspotting and age.

Conclusions: A reliable and valid Strengthspotting Scale was developed, which will now be able to support future research in this area. It will also enable coaching practitioners to assess more readily their own preferences and capabilities in relation to strengthspotting.

Keywords: Strengths; strengthspotting; measurement; scale development; coaching.

Full article: Volume 5, Issue 2 pages 165 - 176