Grit: The long and short of it.

Abstract

Grit is defined as passion and perseverance for achieving long-term goals and consists of two proposed subcomponents: consistency of interests and perseverance of effort. It has become a much-discussed construct even though research on its underlying factor structure has produced inconclusive results. Furthermore, grit as measured by its most frequently used measure, the Grit-S, does not clearly define "long term" or include the word passion. In addition, only a few studies have looked at factor structure variation and predictive validity of grit in different age and cultural groups. We examined, using state of the art multidimensional item response models and structural equation models, the factor structure of both the Grit-S and a newly developed scale (LT-Grit scale) that specifies what is meant by long term. Participants included 1,250 U.S. high school students, 600 U.S. college students, and 500 Korean college students. We found varying factor structures for the Grit-S and a stable one-factor structure for LT-Grit, across age and culture. Perseverance of effort as measured by the Grit-S was the strongest predictor of grades in the three samples. LT-Grit predicted grades only in the U.S. high school and Korean college samples. Thus, there is no evidence that a consistent grit factor or factors exist across age and culture. Educational Impact and Implications StatementGrit is defined as individuals' passion and perseverance for achieving long-term goals. Over the last 10ϩ years it has received much attention in the popular press and from education policymakers despite the lack of consensus on its exact meaning or how strongly it relates to academic achievement. We investigated (using state of the art data analytic techniques) how similar or different grit was in high school and college students and in two different cultures (Korea and the U.S) and how strongly its two proposed components, perseverance of effort (PE) and consistency of interests (CI), relate to students' grades. We found differences in the nature of grit in the different groups, and also that PE related more strongly to achievement than did CI. A main implication of our results is that calls to intervene to improve students' overall grit as a way to enhance their achievement are at best premature and at worst a mistake given our findings and those of others.

Exploring Grit: “Grit Linguistics” and Research on Domain-General Grit and L2 Grit

“…The development of the Grit Scale did not include sharp attention to issues of time (Duckworth et al, 2007;. In the SLA context, L2 grit researchers should look carefully at the domain-general LT (Long-Term) Grit Scale (see Morell et al, 2020), which has already corrected the time problems that we pointed out in the Grit-O and the Grit-S versions of the domain-general Grit Scale. See the preceding section for an important review of time in the Grit Scale, and let's start the discussion in earnest.…”

Grit as a Predictor of Foreign Language Proficiency: An Investigation of Grit and EFL Proficiency in Japanese University Students

“…Although the bulk of grit studies have utilized a domain-general approach to researching grit, there is a growing body of work that has investigated grit from a domain-specific perspective (e.g. Eskreis-Winkler et al, 2014;Mondak, 2020;Morell, 2020, Schmidt et al, 2019. Teimouri et al (2020) suggest that investigations of grit's relationship to foreign language learning should be conducted from a domain-specific perspective.…”

L2 Grit

“…This means that low levels of each of these two subdomains (e.g., PE and CI) might not be regarded as grit. Moreover, as criticized by Morell et al (2021), the short version of the grit scale that has been widely used in the grit-related literature fails to adequately tap into the long-term goals that individuals pursue at the core of the construct.…”