Examining the domain specificity of grit

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Highlights

  • Exploratory factor analyses indicated that grit is a multidimensional construct.

  • Student athletes reported higher levels of grit in sport than school.

  • Student athletes reported higher levels of grit in sport than ‘life in general.’

  • Grade Point Average (GPA) was best predicted by a domain-specific measure of grit.

Abstract

Researchers have questioned whether grit should be conceptualized and measured as a global- (i.e., domain-general) or domain-specific construct. The purpose of this study was to determine if there is value in conceptualizing and measuring grit as a domain-specific construct. 251 intercollegiate student-athletes completed three versions of the Grit Scale (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007) to measure grit in the context of sport, school/academe, and life in general. Results of a repeated-measures MANOVA revealed that grit levels varied as a function of situational context. Participants reported significantly higher grit in sport than in school and life in general. Results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the school-specific measure of grit accounted for significant amounts of incremental variance in respondents' grade point average beyond the variance explained by the global measure of grit. Results indicate that there is merit to conceptualizing and measuring grit as a domain-specific construct in different achievement domains.

Introduction

Grit—defined as an individual's “perseverance and passion for long term goals” (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007, p. 1087)—has been credited with playing an important role in achievement-striving processes because it can provide people with the capacity to pursue personally meaningful goals over long periods of time despite setbacks, failures, and boredom (Duckworth et al., 2007). Although grit captures aspects of resilience—where resilience represents a person's ability to bounce back from failure or adversity—Duckworth (as cited in Perkins-Gough, 2013, p. 16) noted that grit also reflects the tendency of people to maintain ‘consistent interests’ or ‘focused passions’ on specific tasks/objectives for long periods of time regardless of whether failure or adversity is encountered.

Grit is conceptualized as a higher-order personality trait consisting of two lower-order facets labelled, Consistency of Interests and Perseverance of Effort (Duckworth et al., 2007). Consistency of interests (CI) reflects the tendency of individuals to sustain commitment and maintain focus on the accomplishment of goals/tasks over long periods of time. Perseverance of effort (PE) reflects the tendency of individuals to pursue long-term goals with sustained effort despite obstacles and setbacks (Duckworth & Gross, 2014).

Duckworth et al.'s (2007) Grit Scale and its successor—the Short Grit Scale (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009)—have been used extensively by researchers (see Credé, Tynan, & Harms, 2017). Studies have revealed associations between grit and a multitude of affective, cognitive, and achievement/performance correlates in a range of achievement-, social-, and vocational-settings including academe, competitive sport, marital relations, military selection/training, teaching, and business/entrepreneurship (see Duckworth, 2016). In accordance with Duckworth et al.'s (2007) original conceptualization, most researchers have treated grit as a global or domain-general construct, where grit represents the tendency of individuals “to act, think, and feel…[in ways] that are relatively stable across time and situation[s]” (Von Culin, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2014, p. 306). Despite this prevailing conceptualization, some researchers (e.g., Eskreis-Winkler, Shulman, Beal, & Duckworth, 2014; Griffin, McDermott, McHugh, Fitzmaurice, & Weiss, 2016) have highlighted the need to determine if grit should be conceptualized and measured as a domain-specific construct. Duckworth and Quinn (2009) brought specific attention to this issue almost a decade ago noting:

… an important conceptual question that should be addressed in further research concerns the domain specificity of grit…. The implicit assumption [in the research community] is that the tendency to pursue long-term goals with passion and perseverance is relatively domain general, but of course, it is possible that an individual shows tremendous grit in her or his professional life but none at all in her or his personal relationships. Similarly, it may be that an individual sees oneself as gritty with respect to a serious hobby but not with respect to one's career…. Our intuition is that respondents [when indicating their grit levels on existing self-report instruments] integrate behavior over domains, but we cannot be sure. Future studies are needed to explore the domain-specific versus domain-general aspects of grit (p. 173).

To the best of our knowledge, only one published study (i.e., Schmidt, Fleckenstein, Retelsdorf, Eskreis-Winkler, & Mӧller, 2017) has examined this issue. Schmidt et al. administered a German-language version of the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S) to 271 high school students. One version of the scale adopted the original global/domain-general wording of items, whereas instructions and items in another version were modified to situate responses in the context of school. A series of multiple regression analyses revealed that the domain/school-specific version of the scale was a significant (positive) predictor of student achievement (i.e., Grade Point Average [GPA]), whereas the domain-general measure was not a significant predictor of GPA. Schmidt et al. concluded that their results provided evidence supporting the domain-specific measurement of grit in an academic context. If domain-specific measures of grit explain variance in domain-specific criterion variables (beyond domain-general measures), the use of domain-specific measures in research will likely provide a greater understanding of grit's role in the achievement striving process in different contexts.

The overarching purpose of this study was to determine whether grit can/should be conceptualized and measured as a domain-specific construct. To this end, we followed Duckworth and Quinn's (2009, p. 173) recommendation of asking people to respond to grit items in different achievement contexts. More specifically, we compared intercollegiate student-athletes' grit levels in the domains of sport, school/academe, and ‘life in general’ to determine if grit varied as a function of situational context (cf. Dunn, Gotwals, & Causgrove Dunn, 2005). Incremental validity evidence supporting (or refuting) the domain-specific measurement of grit was also sought by examining the degree to which a domain-specific measure of grit in school explained variance in student GPA beyond the variance explained by a domain-general measure. Given the exploratory nature of this study, no a priori hypotheses were presented regarding the expected direction or magnitude of differences in grit levels between the three contexts (i.e., sport, school, and life in general). However, following Schmidt et al.'s (2017) results, it was tentatively hypothesized that a school-specific measure of grit would explain incremental variance in student GPA beyond the variance explained by the domain-general measure.

Section snippets

Participants

A total of 251 (149 male, 102 female) intercollegiate (varsity) student-athletes (M age = 20.34 years, SD = 2.0) from a western Canadian university participated in the study. Participants were predominantly Caucasian (82%) and reported an average of 11.17 years (SD = 4.52) competitive experience in their primary sport (i.e., basketball, football, ice hockey, rugby, soccer, and volleyball). Students were enrolled within 13 different faculties throughout the university.

Measures

A demographic questionnaire

Preliminary psychometric analyses

Given the changes that were made to the instruction-sets and items within the grit scales, and considering current debates regarding the appropriateness of combining CI and PE scores into a single composite grit score versus treating the subscales as separate facets of grit (see Credé et al., 2017), the latent structure of all three grit scales was examined using a series of Principal Axes factor analyses (followed by oblique [direct oblimin] rotations). The number of factors extracted in each

Discussion

This study sought to determine if grit is best conceptualized and measured as a global (i.e., domain-general) construct or as a domain-specific construct. Bivariate correlations between the three consistency-of-interests subscales and between the three perseverance-of-effort subscales ranged from 0.40 to 0.72 (see Table 2), indicating that the ‘relative consistency’ of people's grit scores across contexts was quite high; this finding supports a domain-general view of grit. However, mean

Conclusion

The current study revealed differences in grit levels in the domains of sport and school, yet without more research it remains unknown whether similar differences might exist in other achievement contexts where grit can operate (e.g., vocational settings). Similarly, although the school-grit scale explained variance in academic achievement beyond the domain-general measure, until further research is conducted it cannot be concluded that domain-specific measures of grit will necessarily explain

Declarations of interest

None.

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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

1

The first author is now at the University of Saskatchewan. The research was conducted by the first author at the University of Alberta as part of her graduate program while studying under the supervision of the second author.

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