Frequently Asked Questions
Troubleshooting
What if I have already taken Clifton Strengths for Students in a class or at the Student Development Center? Do I need to take it again?
No, you need only to retrieve your results by accessing the StrengthsQuest website.
| Phone Number | 269-488-4045 |
| E-mail address | Strengths@kvcc.edu |
What if I forgot my username and/or password?
- You can visit www.strengthsquest.com and click on “Sign In” in the upper right corner. From the Sign In page click on “Account Assistance” to reset your password or click on “Help” for additional troubleshooting.
- You can call Gallup Client Support 1-888-211-4049 and they can help you reset your password. They can also confirm what email address you used when you registered for Clifton Strengths for Students.
How much does it cost students to take Clifton Strengths for Students at Kalamazoo Valley?
Kalamazoo Valley will pay for currently registered students to take Clifton Strengths for Students. (value: $10)
Strengths in the Classroom
If you are an instructor and would like to learn how you can use Clifton Strengths for Students in your courses, contact Ezra Bell, who will help you get started with bringing Strengths into your classroom and to help our students discover themselves and reach their goals.
- Email:
- Phone: 269-488-4045
What courses are currently using Clifton Strengths for Students?
To date, Clifton Strengths for Students has been used in the following courses:
- Communications: Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communications, Advanced Communications, and Communication Theory
- Transitional Studies: Fundamentals of Reading II, Career Decision Making, College Success Strategies
- Dental Hygiene: Clinical Technician
- English: Accelerated Language Arts, College Writing I, Business Communications
- Business: Principles of Marketing, Business Writing Skills, Organizational Behavior, and Professional Sales
- Nursing: Basic Nursing Skills Lab
- Mathematics: Number Concepts for Elementary and Middle School Teachers
- Sociology: Principals of Sociology
- Psychology: Introductory Psychology, Human Growth and Development, and Child Psychology
- Wellness and Physical Education: Holistic Health, Foundations of Health / Physical Education / Recreation
- Automotive: Ethics and Employability Skills
- Drafting: SolidWorks
- Art and New Media: JavaScript
- Computer Information Systems: PC Hardware and Software Support, Programming Logic, Web Page Coding, and Systems Analysis and Design
- Political Sciences: Introduction to Political Sciences
As well as the Wind Turbine Technician and Hospitality Academies at The Groves Center. Check with your instructor to see if Strengths is a part of your curriculum this semester.
Reports
What types of reports are available?
The following reports and tools are available for Clifton Strengths for Students:
- Signature Theme Report
- Brief Theme Report
- Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide
- Action Items for Students, Teachers/Faculty and Professional Development
- Certificate Creator that allows you to personalize certificates, door hangers, and postcards that display your top five themes.
NOTE: Currently the Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide and the Brief version of the Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide are available in English only.
Why does the Clifton Strengths for Students reveal only my top five themes?
The purpose of the Clifton Strengths for Students is to start you on the path to strengths by helping you discover your most dominant talents.
Talents are the "raw materials" required for strengths development, and the more dominant the talent, the greater the opportunity for strength. The Clifton Strengths for Students measures the presence of talents in 34 areas, or "themes," but only reveals your top five themes in order to provide focus on your most dominant talents.
Are my top five themes listed in a specific order?
Your top five themes (Signature Themes) are ranked high to low based on the dominance of your talents. The more dominant your talents are within a theme, the higher that theme will appear in rank order. Your top themes give you the greatest opportunity for strength.
About Strengths
What is a strength?
A strength is the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity. The key to building a strength is to identify your dominant talents, then complement them by acquiring knowledge and skills pertinent to the activity.
What is the difference between a talent and a strength?
A strength is the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity. Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. Talents, knowledge, and skills -- along with the time spent (i.e., investment) practicing, developing your skills, and building your knowledge base -- combine to create your strengths.
For example, being drawn toward strangers and enjoying the challenge of making a connection with them are talents (from the Woo theme), whereas the ability to consistently build a network of supporters who know you and are prepared to help you is a strength. To build this strength, you have refined your talents with skills and knowledge. Likewise, the tendency to confront others is a talent (from the Command theme), whereas the ability to sell successfully is a strength. To persuade others to buy your product, you must have combined your talent with product knowledge and certain selling skills.
Although talents, skills, and knowledge are each important for building a strength, talent is always the most important. The reason is that your talents are innate and cannot be acquired, unlike skills and knowledge. For example, as a salesperson you can learn your products' features (knowledge), you can be trained to ask the right open-ended questions (a skill), and you can practice making a sale (investment). However, the innate tendency to push a customer to commit at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right way must be naturally occurring and cannot be learned.
The key to building a fully developed strength is to identify your most dominant talents, which are likely found within your top five themes, then complement them with acquired knowledge, skills, and investment.
Can my talents change?
Because talents are naturally enduring, it is unlikely that your talents will change significantly over the course of your life. By shifting your focus and acquiring new skills and knowledge to capitalize on your greatest talents in different ways, you can develop new strengths.
However, this does not mean that you won't change during the course of your life. You surely will change in some respects. Your values, the moral compass that focuses your life, will point you in different directions at age 20 than at age 60. Also, your self-awareness will deepen as you age, making you less defensive about your lesser talents and more sophisticated about where and how to apply your greatest talents.
Nevertheless, how you naturally feel, think, and behave almost certainly will remain the same. As your life progresses, you more fully develop who you already are.
Are any of the themes opposites?
No. Each theme is discrete. The Futuristic theme (fascination with the future) is not the opposite of the Context theme (fascination with the past). Similarly, the Discipline theme (desire for routine and structure) is not the opposite of the Adaptability theme (ability to "go with the flow").
Your powerful talents in one theme do not prevent you from being highly talented in any other theme.
Can you build a strength through practice alone, or does it require some natural talent?
Development of a strength in any activity requires talents, which are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied.
Knowledge and skill are key components of strength, but to possess true strength (i.e., the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity) you must use the best of your natural self -- your dominant talents.
What is Gallup's position on strengths and weaknesses?
Without a great deal of hard work, talent alone is never enough. Without natural talent, a lot of hard work will yield little return. Therefore, when considering where to invest one's time, energy, and attention, Gallup research indicates that the best place to start is in an area of strength. Yet by no means does any of our research suggest that people should ignore their weaknesses. To do so, especially in the classroom or workplace, is reckless.
All of Gallup's development programs focus on helping individuals to build on their strengths and to determine how their weaknesses can best be managed. Our strengths-based approached has helped students to increase retention, academic engagement, perceived academic control, hope, and wellbeing. Likewise, strengths can help staff and faculty increase productivity, drive performance, and improve areas with underperforming management or leadership. We do not advise ignoring areas of weakness; the result would be detrimental to a campus's impact -- and likely an individual's career.
What resources do you offer for implementing Strengths on a campus or in the classroom?
Gallup offers support to schools and campuses that are implementing Clifton Strengths for Students through training and events, an online resource center, and a network of strengths advisors. Learn more about our:
About the Clifton Strengths for Students Assessment
Can the Clifton Strengths for Students reveal whether I am in the right career?
The Clifton Strengths for Students was designed for use in a purely developmental context. It is not designed to direct you into specific professions. Although certain themes do appear to be quite consistently dominant within certain professions, it would be wrong to say that a given profession requires dominant talents in certain themes. During our research, we discovered many individuals who were excelling in the same profession but who had very different top five themes.
The best way to use the Clifton Strengths for Students to guide your career is to determine ways to apply the talents in your top five themes to whatever role or profession you choose. For more information on how the Clifton Strengths for Students may help you guide your career, see Chapter 10 of the online Clifton Strengths for Students book.
On what personality theory is the Clifton Strengths Finder based?
The Clifton Strengths for Students is based on a general model of Positive Psychology, which is a framework, or paradigm, that encompasses an approach to psychology from the perspective of healthy, successful life functioning. Topics include optimism, positive emotions, spirituality, happiness, satisfaction, personal development, and wellbeing. These and similar topics may be studied at the individual level or in a workgroup, family, or community. While some who study Positive Psychology are therapists, a more typical distinction is that therapists focus on removing dysfunction, while Positive Psychologists focus on maintaining or enhancing successful function.
The perspective taken by Positive Psychology and the Clifton Strengths for Students differs from that of other theories and instruments developed to measure various psychological constructs. For that reason, we have not sought to develop a table that would compare and contrast the Clifton Strengths for Students approach to that of psychological assessments that theoretically measure other constructs by means of other theoretical starting points.
What is the Clifton Strengths for Students?
The Clifton Strengths for Students is a Web-based assessment of normal personality from the perspective of Positive Psychology. It is the first instrument of this type developed expressly for the Internet.
Over a secure connection, the Clifton Strengths for Students presents 177 items to you. Each item consists of a pair of potential self-descriptors, such as "I read instructions carefully" versus "I like to jump right into things."
The descriptors are placed as if anchoring polar ends of a continuum. You are then asked to choose the descriptor that best describes you, and to identify the extent to which that chosen option is descriptive of you.
You are given 20 seconds to respond to a given pair of descriptors before the assessment automatically presents the next pair.
What is the research behind the Clifton Strengths Finder?
Based on a 40-year study of human strengths, Gallup created a language of the 34 most common talents and developed the Clifton Strengths for Students assessment to help people discover and describe these talents.
What does the Clifton Strengths for Students measure?
The Clifton Strengths for Students measures the presence of talents in 34 general areas referred to as "themes." Talents are ways in which we naturally think, feel, and behave as unique individuals, and they serve as the foundation of strengths development.
Upon completing the Clifton Strengths for Students, you will receive a report displaying your top five (most dominant) themes. You then have the opportunity to delve into those themes to discover your greatest talents. The Clifton Strengths for Students and the report of your top five themes were designed to help you learn about and build upon your greatest talents in order to create strengths that will enhance all aspects of your life.
Does the Clifton Strengths for Students measure artistic talent?
Although the Clifton Strengths for Students does not measure the physical talents related to artistic ability -- or any other ability -- it does measure talents that can be applied to any activity, including the processes of creating or appreciating art.
The Clifton Strengths for Students measures talents that are woven so tightly into the fabric of our lives that we, and others, fail to discern them. Instead, if we possess them, these talents reveal themselves in every one of our actions and interactions. They can become so familiar, so commonplace, that we cease to value them. And yet they pervade, and to a great extent, explain everything we do.
The chief purpose of the Clifton Strengths for Students is to help you step back from yourself for just a moment so that you can identify, value, and then refine these talents in all of your endeavors -- whether in music, art, public speaking, or in the classroom.
Demographics
Why is demographic information needed?
Your demographic information is used for research purposes only, and only in aggregate to ensure confidentiality. We are a world leader in research about people, including their talents, opinions, and sources of work-related motivation and satisfaction. To maintain the highest level of research integrity, we constantly check our data in many ways to ensure its reliability and accuracy. Your responses to demographic questions help guarantee that all Clifton Strengths for Students results are fair, accurate, and beneficial to all users.
Have demographic comparisons revealed any differences in Clifton Strengths for Students results among races, sexes, nationalities, or age groups?
Some slight differences do exist, but on an individual level they are negligible. The most interesting and significant talent differences can be found between individuals, not people.
Taking the Clifton Strengths for Students Assessment
Can I retake the Clifton Strengths for Students assessment? Can taking the Clifton Strengths for Students more than once affect my results?
Your first completion of the Clifton Strengths for Students will yield the purest and most revealing results. For this reason, each Clifton Strengths for Students access code is valid for only one time through the assessment.
Taking the Clifton Strengths for Students more than once may actually decrease the accuracy of your results. The Clifton Strengths for Students measures the presence of talents by presenting you with a pair of statements, then challenging you to make a top-of-mind choice between the two. The 20-second time limit and your unfamiliarity with the statements ensure your assessment's accuracy by making it difficult to over-think your responses.
If you are distracted or interrupted while taking the Clifton Strengths for Students, the assessment will automatically stop after three missed responses. When you resume, it will pick up where you left off. The average person does miss responding to a few items, but because the instrument presents 177 items, missing a few will not significantly affect your results.
Can I take the Clifton Strengths for Students if I have a reading disability?
Yes. There is a 20-second timer for each statement on the Clifton Strengths for Students assessment. However, it can be turned off if you have a disability that requires you to take the Clifton Strengths for Students assessment without a time limit.
If this is the case, please use your access code to set up a username and password for an account, then contact StrengthsQuestHelp@gallup.com.
Note that the 20-second time limit and your unfamiliarity with the statements ensure your assessment's accuracy by making it difficult to over-think your responses.
Does the mood I was in affect my results?
Through our research, we have discovered that a person's mood has little effect on his or her Clifton Strengths for Students results.
This doesn't mean that your mood will have no effect whatsoever on your responses to the statements. It means that the Clifton Strengths for Students effectively cuts through your mood to reveal your most dominant themes of talent.
Statisticians will be interested to know that our research found test-retest reliabilities of 0.60-0.80.
What should I do if I am interrupted while taking the Clifton Strengths for Students?
If you are interrupted while taking the Clifton Strengths for Students, you do not need to start over. If necessary, simply sign in again, and the assessment will automatically resume where you left off. If you are still signed in, click the Continue button to return to the paired statements you were considering before you were interrupted. Keep in mind that the best results are obtained when the entire survey is taken in one sitting, which requires approximately 30-40 minutes for the average person. For this reason, please allow enough time to take the entire survey without interruption.
How do neutral responses to the Clifton Strengths for Students affect my results?
Neutral responses are not counted in the scoring of your results. The purpose of the Clifton Strengths for Students is to help you begin to discover your most dominant talents by identifying the areas, or "themes," in which they lie. It does so by presenting you with a situation in which you are forced to select between two options that are different, but not necessarily opposite.
Obviously, if you can't make a selection because you feel that neither choice applies to you, your neutral response will not count in the final scoring process.
Less obviously, if you can't make a selection because you feel that both choices apply to you, your neutral response will still not count in the final scoring process. This is because sometimes the most revealing choices are between two positives. If both statements apply to you equally, then this pair of statements probably is not tapping into one of your most dominant themes.
Why is there a timer for each statement? What if I didn't have time to choose a response?
The time limit and your unfamiliarity with the statements ensure your assessment's accuracy by making it difficult to over-think your responses. The Clifton Strengths for Students works by challenging you to make choices between paired statements. Whenever your talents lead you to make a choice, we capture it. The combination of all the choices you made are used to calculate your top five themes. If the time limit prevented you from making a choice, it is very likely that neither statement affected you in a way that allowed you to make a top-of-mind choice. Whether each of the two statements described you equally well, or neither statement described you well, your difficulty in making a choice reveals that the statement pair probably did not tap into one of your most dominant themes of talent.
Why doesn't a "Both" option exist for situations when both statements describe me well, or when neither statement describes me well?
The omission of a Both option was intentional.
The research that led to the Clifton Strengths for Students revealed that people are not "well-rounded" and that your best opportunity for strength lies in your greatest talents.
Rather than allow you to say you are good at everything, the assessment helps you sort and rank your talents as your instincts guide you -- just as you naturally do throughout each day.