Character Building at Bachelor's Psychology Program - Findings Based on a Natural Approach

Character building (CB) is important for basic psychologists. This study aims to investigate the implementation and interpretation of character building (CB) in the three-year Bachelor of Psychology program at Tilburg University. Five dimensions of CB, including intellectual independence, critical mindset, social responsibility, scientific responsibility, and entrepreneurship, were analyzed using a review and template thematic analysis as part of the regular quality assurance assessment in 2021-2022. The results of the full program assessment plan and additional data collection on course practices revealed that the five dimensions of CB were well-integrated into most educational processes at both the program and course level. We submitted this previously as a preprint and received the following comments:

 Nicholas's comment: Dear Dr Sabita Soedamah, Thank you for your interest in Advance, the preprint server for social science research offered by SAGE Publishing. We have successfully received your submission; however, your paper appears to include research on human participants without any indication of participant consent or approval from an Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board within your paper. Please complete the following (where applicable): 1. Please add a note to your Method's section that states you obtained participant consent as well as the full name and institution of the ethics review committee, in addition to the approval number, if available. 2. If you did not receive consent or get approval from an ethics committee OR if it was not necessary for your study, we ask that you please note this in your paper. 3. Please update your Ethics Statement in the submission form to match the statement within the body of your paper.  

Author's reply: we have now updated the manuscript accordingly and addressed these points requested by the reviewer.