Planning Grant for Virtue Interventions in Adolescent Athletes: Effects of Imbuing Activities with Instrumental, Moral, or Spiritual Meaning

The purpose of this planning grant is to prepare for a larger grant that will examine the best ways to develop character strengths and virtues in adolescents, particularly testing the efficacy of presenting self-control and patience building activities as instrumental, moral, or spiritual in their purpose as well as the effects of framing activities as building strengths versus fixing weaknesses. We seek to examine virtue development in sports, as athletics are popularly touted as a conduit of character building. The core questions addressed in our work are the ways to best develop character strengths and virtues in adolescents. Planning grant activities will include pilot testing self-control and patience interventions in adolescents, pilot testing experimental manipulations, compiling an extended literature review of character development in adolescent sports, constructing a strong research design for the larger proposal, and building relationships with leaders and coaches at local schools and sports team who will participate in the larger study. Concrete outputs include the submission of a full proposal to JTF, 1-2 conference presentations, 1-2 peer-reviewed articles, and press releases to coaching organizations. Anticipated outcomes include research training for graduate students, extension of the empirical research on self-control and patience development interventions, and preparation of the larger study on virtue development. Beyond academia, we endeavor to provide training resources to coaches, educators, and youth workers on concrete ways they can incorporate virtue interventions or practices into their programs to build character.