Grit and academic achievement: A comparative cross-cultural meta-analysis.

Abstract

This review examined the relations between grit and academic achievement based on a meta-analysis of 137 studies yielding 156 dependent samples (N = 285,331). Using the robust variance estimation, we found that the correlations of overall grit level with academic achievement were generally weak to moderate (weighted r = .19). The correlation of perseverance of effort to achievement (weighted r = .21) was stronger than that of consistency of interest (weighted r = .08). Adopting a cross-cultural perspective in reviewing these findings, we concluded that the associations between overall grit/2 facets and academic achievement did not differ across individualism-collectivism. We also investigated 7 other moderators, including grit measurement, types of achievement measures, publication type, educational levels, research design, study quality, and the female ratio of sampling in the grit-achievement relationship. After controlling for all proposed moderators, no significant moderators were found in the overall grit-achievement link or the consistency of interest-achievement link. There was a significantly stronger association between perseverance of effort and academic achievement in nonstandardized measures than in standardized measures. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Educational Impact and Implications StatementThis review contributes to the existing grit literature by providing further insights into the grit and academic achievement relationships by synthesizing 137 studies. The findings suggest that students' overall grit and its 2 grit facets demonstrated positive associations with academic achievement (.08 # rs # .21), regardless students' sociocultural backgrounds. Further moderator analyses showed that, after controlling for all proposed moderators, the association between perseverance of effort and academic achievement was stronger for nonstandardized academic achievement measures (i.e., GPA and school grade) than standardized measures (i.e., public exams). This review suggests that grit can facilitate academic achievement among student populations across cultures. Our findings improve our current understanding of how and when grit as a character strength is associated with academic achievement. These findings may be beneficial to schools that consistently deal with student noncognitive development and how this can be transferred to academic study.

On Domain-Specific Conceptualization and Measurement of Grit in L2 Learning

“…Considering the relationship between L2 achievement and the sub-components of L2 grit, although perseverance was generally found to be more strongly related to L2 achievement than passion (e.g., Teimouri et al, 2020), a reverse pattern was observed in Sudina and Plonsky (2021a), in which passion was found to be a superior predictor of L2 achievement than perseverance. All in all, in contrast to the findings of Credé et al's (2017) and Lam and Zhou's (2021) meta-analyses, SLA research has shown a more robust relationship between L2 grit and achievement, substantiating our arguments regarding the importance of grit in the L2 learning context and, in particular, the need for adopting a domain-specific approach toward this construct.…”

“…Nevertheless, Credé et al's (2017) meta-analysis of grit studies revealed only a weak, positive correlation between domain-general grit and academic performance (r = .18). Similarly, Lam and Zhou (2021) reported a weak, positive correlation (r = .19) between domain-general grit and academic achievement in their meta-analysis of grit research in educational contexts. In addition, these two meta-analyses identified the perseverance sub-component of domain-general grit as a better correlate of achievement than its passion sub-component, leading the authors to recommend against combining perseverance and passion sub-components of grit while examining their effects on achievement.…”

“…Although individual differences research in SLA has been traditionally informed and inspired by sister disciplines such as social and educational psychology, the research findings obtained in these neighboring domains should be further scrutinized in the L2 field to better grasp the roles of learner-internal factors-and grit in particular-in L2 learning. For instance, the two meta-analyses conducted on the role of domaingeneral grit (Credé et al, 2017;Lam & Zhou, 2021) have rarely included studies conducted in the L2 learning context. Thus, it would be inappropriate to assume that such findings will generalize to L2 learning.…”

The Role of Grit in Organizational Performance During a Pandemic

“…Employees with a higher level of grit can perform their best in a variety of situations (Duckworth and Quinn, 2009 ). However, recent research presents inconsistent results in this regard (Hodge et al, 2018 ; Kannangara et al, 2018 ; Schmidt et al, 2018 ; Frontini et al, 2021 ; Lam and Zhou, 2022 ). This study confirmed that grit is associated with higher OP based on data analysis.…”

“…For example, while one study found that women have higher levels of grit than men on average (Schmidt et al, 2018 ), another found no difference between women and men in terms of grit (Hodge et al, 2018 ). Similarly, some studies have failed to investigate the positive impact of grit on achievement-related variables (Lam and Zhou, 2022 ).…”