This study aimed to develop culturally context-sensitive self-report measures of Virtue Practice and Meaning Exploration for upper elementary students and to provide preliminary evidence of reliability and validity. Social-emotional and character development contributes to children’s well-being, interpersonal functioning, and school adjustment, and is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of character education programs. Given the diversity of construct definitions across programs and the growing need for culturally responsive measurement, we developed two scales grounded in the MVP framework, in which M represents moral thinking, V represents virtue practice, and P represents purpose exploration. Scale development followed five steps: construct definition and literature synthesis, item pool generation, expert review and revision, pilot administration with item analysis, and validation of the measurement model. For Virtue Practice, eight core virtues (fairness, respect, courage, honesty, cooperation, empathy, gratitude, and love/care) were consolidated into four dimensions: Fairness/Respect, Courage/Honesty, Empathy/Care and Gratitude, and Cooperation. An initial pool of 98 items was reviewed by experts and reduced to 54 items. For Meaning Exploration, four subscales were specified—Emotional Awareness and Regulation, Self-Control and Regulation, Self-Exploration, and Growth Motivation—yielding 70 draft items that were reduced to 46 items after expert review. Pilot data were collected from 172 students in Grades 3 to 5 (53% boys, 47% girls). Items with low discrimination were removed based on item–total correlations and factor loadings; items with item–total correlations below .30 were deleted. The final Virtue Practice scale included 41 items. Internal consistency estimates (Cronbach’s α) for the four Virtue Practice subscales ranged from .67 to .82. The Meaning Exploration scale was further refined to 32 items, with subscale α coefficients ranging from .61 to .81. To evaluate construct validity, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted in R using the lavaan package. Given the ordinal response format and modest sample size, polychoric correlations were used and parameters were estimated with the WLSMV estimator. Model fit for Virtue Practice was acceptable to good (χ²/df = 1.95, CFI = .95, TLI = .95, RMSEA = .075). Model fit for Meaning Exploration was acceptable (χ²/df = 2.32, CFI = .95, TLI = .94, RMSEA = .088). In a paired subsample (n = 107), Meaning Exploration scores were significantly lower than Virtue Practice scores (t(106) = 9.16, p < .001), with Self-Control/Regulation lowest within Meaning Exploration. Overall, results provide initial psychometric support for the two scales and suggest their potential utility for evaluating character education and related interventions in elementary school settings. The Meaning Exploration model demonstrated acceptable fit; future work will further refine items and conduct cross-sample validation to improve model stability.

Participants. Using convenience sampling, we recruited students from 10 classrooms (Grades 3–5) at an elementary school in northern Taiwan. After obtaining informed consent and screening for data completeness, 172 students were retained for analysis: 26 third-graders, 61 fourth-graders, and 85 fifth-graders. The sample included 92 boys (53.5%) and 80 girls (46.5%). Measure framework. The instrument was designed to evaluate the MVP character education curriculum and provide classroom feedback for upper-elementary students. Virtue Practice in the MVP curriculum originally covers eight virtues: fairness, respect, courage, honesty, cooperation, empathy, gratitude, and love/caring. To reduce respondent burden and address conceptual overlap among virtues, we conducted a literature review and aligned constructs with curriculum objectives. A panel of experts then consolidated the virtues into four integrated dimensions: Fairness & Respect, Courage & Honesty, Empathy/Caring & Gratitude, and Cooperation. Meaning Exploration was conceptualized as a developmental process supporting value-consistent goal pursuit and everyday enactment of meaning. It comprises four subdimensions: Self-Exploration, Emotional Awareness and Regulation, Growth Motivation, and Self-Control and Regulation. Item development and content validation. Because the measure was intended for routine school administration, items were written to be age-appropriate and brief in total length. Experts generated an initial pool of 98 Virtue Practice items and 70 Meaning Exploration items based on construct definitions and curriculum goals. Items were reviewed by one psychometrics specialist and two character education experts for construct alignment and potential social desirability; experts independently edited and screened items. A research assistant with teaching experience checked readability, followed by a consensus meeting to finalize the scales. The final Virtue Practice scale contained 54 items (14, 14, 19, and 7 items across the four dimensions, respectively). The final Meaning Exploration scale contained 46 items (7, 15, 8, and 16 items across the four subdimensions, respectively). All items used a 5-point Likert-type format, with anchors reflecting agreement or frequency depending on item wording. Procedure. The two scales were interleaved in one pilot questionnaire and administered by classroom teachers over two class periods. Data analysis. Internal consistency was examined in SPSS; items with corrected item–subscale total correlations ≤ .30 were considered for deletion, with content coverage and factor information also considered. Construct validity was evaluated using CFA in R (lavaan). Items were treated as ordinal indicators and estimated with WLSMV. Model fit criteria were χ²/df ≤ 3, CFI ≥ .95, TLI ≥ .95, and RMSEA ≤ .08.

Grounded in the MVP character-education curriculum, this study developed two instruments—the Virtue Practice Scale and the Meaning Exploration Scale—to assess SEL-related competencies among Grades 3–5 students. After item generation, expert review, and screening, Virtue Practice was reduced from 98 to 54 items and Meaning Exploration from 70 to 46 items. WLSMV-based CFA supported four-factor structures. Virtue Practice showed good fit (χ²/df = 1.95, CFI = .95, TLI = .95, RMSEA = .075). Meaning Exploration met or approximated the incremental-fit criteria (CFI = .95, TLI = .94), but RMSEA = .088 slightly exceeded the .08 threshold, indicating the need for further refinement and cross-validation. Internal consistency was generally acceptable: Virtue Practice α = .67–.82 and CR = .70–.86; Meaning Exploration α = .61–.80 and CR = .69–.82. Self-Exploration showed borderline reliability, and Courage/Honesty was marginal (α = .67), suggesting that revising wording and/or adding items and establishing test–retest reliability may improve score precision and temporal stability. In the paired subsample (n = 107), Meaning Exploration scores were significantly lower than Virtue Practice scores (t(106) = 9.16, p < .001), with Self-Control and Regulation lowest within Meaning Exploration, whereas Virtue Practice subscale means were relatively similar. Inter-subscale correlations were moderate (Virtue Practice r = .55–.76; Meaning Exploration r = .44–.71), though the Cooperation–Empathy/Care/Gratitude correlation was relatively high, warranting stronger tests of discriminant validity and checks for content overlap. Overall, these curriculum-aligned scales provide preliminary evidence of structural validity and internal consistency and may support instructional feedback and outcome evaluation in upper-elementary SEL/character education. Future research should replicate findings in larger, more diverse samples, test measurement invariance across grade and gender, establish external criterion-related validity, and evaluate sensitivity to intervention-related change.

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