How Does Character Grow? And How Do You Know It's Happening?
By Dr. Cristin Rollins, Phd
You probably talk about character, maybe without knowing it, all the time. Leadership. Responsibility. Empathy. Resilience. Courage. The question is: do you have a shared understanding of what those words mean in your program — and can you show a funder that it's working?
If your answer is "sort of" or "we're working on it," you're in good company. And you're in exactly the right place.
I've spent a lot of time lately deep in the work of character development — not just as an evaluator, but as a designer, a researcher, and honestly, as a believer. Through the Character Impact Lab, a planning, research, and design collective I direct and co-lead, we've been working with youth-serving organizations across sectors to help them do two things that are harder than they sound: define character clearly and measure it meaningfully.
Here's what I've learned: Most youth-serving organizations are already creating experiences that contribute to character development. They just don't always have a shared language for naming what they want to develop, designing for it intentionally, or showing how they know it's happening.
Let me walk you through what we know.
What Do We Mean by "Character"?
Character is not a morality checklist. It's not a personality type. And it's definitely not a fixed trait, like eye color, that kids either have or don't have.
Character is the internal compass that guides how we act in the world. It is the developing set of strengths, values, and practical judgments that young people draw on to care for themselves and others, navigate challenges, act with integrity, and contribute to their communities.
That practical judgment piece matters. Real life rarely asks a young person simply to “use empathy” or “show courage.” They have to read a situation, consider the people and consequences involved, figure out what the moment calls for, and decide how to act.
Character becomes visible in those decisions: how a young person responds to frustration, treats another person, uses influence, honors a commitment, makes a difficult choice, repairs harm, or contributes to a group.
And character develops. It grows over time through relationships, support, challenge, practice, and the environments young people move through. A young person may demonstrate tremendous responsibility in one setting and need much more support in another. That variation is part of development, too.
How Do You Define Character for Your Organization?
Here's a simple truth: your mission statement, values, and program goals probably already contain clues about the character strengths that matter to your organization. You just need to name them.
When we work with organizations, we start by looking at what's already there:
Does your mission emphasize helping young people reach their potential? That might point to self-confidence, curiosity, perseverance, or hope.
Is community central to your work? That might point to empathy, teamwork, service, or interdependence.
Do you emphasize empowerment? You might be talking about self-confidence, autonomy, leadership, or responsibility.
Do you focus on discovery or exploration? Curiosity, open-mindedness, creativity, and love of learning may already be woven through what you do.
Once you surface those embedded strengths, you can narrow them to a focused list that becomes your organization's character identity. Not a borrowed framework. Yours. Keep it manageable: the more strengths you choose, the more complex it becomes to design for them well and measure them meaningfully.
This matters especially for funders. When your character framework is rooted in your mission, values, and program goals, it tells a coherent story. It shows that your work isn't just activity-based, but rather intentional, values-driven, and designed to produce something real in young people.
Character, Clearly™: A Starter Guide
Character, Clearly™ is a short guide that supports teams in naming how character already shows up in their work and developing shared language grounded in their practice.
How Does Character Develop? Caught, Taught, and Sought
Once you've named the character strengths that matter to your organization, the next question is: how do young people develop them?
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues introduced a framework we use and adapt at the Character Impact Lab — character is caught, taught, and sought.
CAUGHT — Young people experience character through what the people and environments around them show them. They notice how adults treat people, what behaviors get rewarded, how power gets used, what happens when someone makes a mistake, and whether the values on the wall show up in daily life.
TAUGHT — Young people also need opportunities to learn what character strengths mean and how to put them into practice. That can happen through explicit instruction, guided reflection, discussion, feedback, activities, or curriculum. The goal is to give young people language, skills, and strategies they can use in their lives.
SOUGHT — Young people need meaningful opportunities to choose and apply what they're learning. That might mean taking responsibility for a real task, navigating a conflict, leading part of a project, making a difficult decision, repairing harm, or contributing to their community. Character grows as young people practice in situations where their choices matter.
Strong character development includes all three. If you say a strength matters, young people should be able to see it, learn what it means, and practice it.
How Do You Measure Character Development?
Here's where my evaluation brain kicks in — and where so many organizations get stuck.
The instinct is to jump straight to: Did our program increase empathy scores? But before you ask whether young people changed, you need to know what they experienced. Did your program create the conditions and opportunities you said it would? Did young people have repeated chances to see, learn, and practice the strengths you're trying to develop?
Stage 1: Developmental Evaluation
Your character approach is new or emerging. This is the time to define and refine it. Work with staff and young people to test your language, definitions, assumptions, and design. Do the strengths you've chosen fit your mission and community? Do people understand them similarly? Can you identify where and how young people would experience and practice them? The goal is a character approach that is clear, coherent, and usable.
Stage 2: Implementation Evaluation
Now ask whether what you designed is showing up in practice. Are young people experiencing the conditions you intended to create? Are they seeing character modeled, learning what particular strengths mean, and getting meaningful opportunities to practice? Observation, staff feedback, youth feedback, and implementation measures can tell you whether the model is being delivered as intended and where it needs strengthening.
Stage 3: Outcome Evaluation
Once implementation is strong enough to make outcome questions meaningful, begin looking for change in young people. Some of the earliest evidence may appear in the Essential Character Skills young people practice: things like accountability, emotional regulation, follow-through, constructive communication, collaborative problem-solving, and agency. Over time, you can examine growth in the character strengths themselves using well-designed surveys, validated measures where appropriate, interviews, observations, and other forms of evidence.
For organizations ready to ask larger impact questions, more rigorous designs — including longitudinal studies, comparison groups, and quasi-experimental approaches — can help examine whether observed changes are plausibly attributable to the program. That's a later-stage question, after you have evidence that the program itself is being implemented well.
This staged approach is central to how teams at Statement House’s Character Impact Lab think about character evaluation. The question isn't simply Did scores go up? It's whether the organization has clearly defined what it intends to develop, created meaningful opportunities for that development, implemented those opportunities consistently, and gathered evidence appropriate to the questions it's ready to answer.
A Note on Culture and Character
One more thing worth naming: character is always expressed and interpreted in context.
The same strength may look different across young people, families, communities, and cultures. Leadership may be expressed through speaking up, quietly taking responsibility, helping a group reach consensus, or making space for someone else's voice. Responsibility, respect, perseverance, and service can also take different forms depending on relationships, expectations, identity, and context.
That matters when we define character, and it matters when we measure it. We need to pay attention to whose definitions we're using, whose behavior gets recognized as a strength, who gets opportunities to lead and contribute, and whether young people and families have had a voice in defining what these strengths look like in their communities.
Character develops in context. Our frameworks and measures should account for that.
Where to Start?
If you're ready to get clearer on character in your organization, start with something you already have:
Look at your mission statement, values, and program goals. Circle every word or phrase that sounds like a value or character strength.
Then ask: Which of these matter most to us? What do we mean by them? Where do young people have opportunities to see them, learn about them, and practice them?
That list is the beginning of your organization's character identity.
And if you want a thought partner for the next steps — defining your strengths, designing opportunities for character to be caught, taught, and sought, or building a funder-ready evaluation strategy — that's the work we do at Statement House’s Character Impact Lab.
What character strengths are already hiding in your mission statement? Share below 👇🏼
Dr. Cristin Rollins is a nationally recognized evaluator, published researcher, and President of Statement House, a woman-owned planning, evaluation, and coaching firm working exclusively with organizations that serve youth and families. She is the Founding Director of Character Impact Lab, a planning, research, and design collective advancing character and leadership development across sectors.
Reach out to Dr. Rollins at hello@statementhouse.net for a free 30-minute consultation.