Character Climate Scale: Development and Multi-Site Validation of a New Tool for Measuring the Moral Ecosystem of a University Full Version

Virtue science has expanded significantly in recent decades but has focused almost exclusively on measurement at the individual level, ignoring the environments that shape character formation. Addressing this gap, we aimed to develop and validate the Character Climate Scale (CCS) to capture the moral ecology of higher education environments. Across ten studies (N > 1,600) at five U.S. institutions the CCS was designed and refined to capture students’ perceptions of the moral ecology of their university as expressed through peers, professors, courses, co-curricular activities and personal formation experiences. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses supported the hypothesized higher-order Character Climate factor and a five-factor structure capturing core domains of moral ecology. The CCS showed strong psychometric properties, including internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity, with stable structure across institutional contexts. The final 23-item CCS provides a robust, practical tool for assessing and tracking the moral ecology of education environments. It also enables institutions to evaluate virtue development efforts, identify strengths and growth areas, and monitor change over time, ultimately advancing virtue science and practice by situating moral development within its environmental context.