Character Strengths, Subjective Well-Being and Self-Esteem: Factorial Invariance between Secondary and Technical Education

The present study aimed to verify possible differences between high school and technical education students, applying an invariance analysis to test the equivalence of the instruments and enable an analysis of the real differences of the latent traits. A total of 316 young people aged between 15 and 19 years (M=16.35; SD=1.22), of both sexes participated in the study. Of those, 54.11% were high school students. The results indicated the equivalence of the instrument to measure personal strengths, well-being and self-esteem in both groups by suggesting that the factorial structure, factor loads and intercepts are similar for both. Regarding the results of mean differences, moderate effect size discrepancies were observed for the character strengths: self-regulation, modesty, perseverance and prudence, with the technical education students endorsing the higher mean. In addition, a difference was found for negative affect, with high school students presenting higher scores.