Training Information

Key points

We have compiled exercises to help you get to know character strengths and ways to foster them.
These exercises have been developed in accordance with scientific findings from psychology.
Participation is free of charge.
You can complete these exercises easily from home. Participation only requires Internet access for accessing the website and completing the questionnaires. Instructions for the exercises can be printed out.
The training duration is 4 weeks and the exercises will take roughly 15 minutes a day.
The program is scientifically supervised and evaluated. To this end, questionnaires need to be filled in at different points in time.
You may need to wait 4 weeks between filling in the first questionnaires and starting your training depending on what group you are in.
At the end of the program, you will receive individual feedback on your filled in questionnaires and on your training success.
Seeing as this is a newly developed program under scientific evaluation, it may be that no positive effects result from it.
If you would like to receive further information, we are happy to help. Please use the contact form.

Training sequence

After registering, you start the basic information phase: You will have access to several scientifically validated questionnaires. Filling those in is a requirement to participate (duration: approximately 50 minutes).
You may enter the preparation phase as soon as you have completed all the questionnaires of the basic information phase. Start this phase when you are ready to start the training. Before you start the training phase, you need to fill in another set of short questionnaires (duration: approximately 10 minutes). These are necessary to track your training progress.
For the Follow-Up 1 and Follow-Up 2 you will need to fill in questionnaires after one month as well as 2 month after the start (duration: 60 minutes). These will enable us to assess and analyze the effects of the training.
For the training you will either be assigned to Training A or Training B. Both are identical, but due to this being part of a scientific project, you will either do the training at the beginning or towards the end of the project. Apart from the different starting times, the training is exactly the same. In the training phase you will receive the training manual. It is 4 weeks of daily activities (approximately 15 minutes long), split into 4 steps (one for each week).
After the last questionnaire at Follow-Up 2, you will receive individual feedback on your training success and questionnaire results from the basic information phase.

Conditions of participation

You are over 18 years old.
You are currently not in psychotherapy or taking psychotropic drugs (Warning! The strengths training is neither a therapy nor a replacement for therapy. If you are experiencing a psychological crisis and/or need professional help, please contact a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist in your local area).
Your interest is private. Those with professional interest in this training program (such as journalists) are asked to contact us.

Data Protection

Any and all of the information you provide on this website will only be used for research purposes by members of the University of Zurich and the University of Basel, Switzerland. All evaluations are anonymous and do not allow conclusions as to who took part in the training. No information will be passed on to third parties. Also, no information is collected that could identify participants (no IP addresses are saved). To register, you only need to provide an email address. Participating with an anonymous email address (such as "anonymous_xy@gmail.com") is perfectly possible.