The Domain-Specificity of Grit in Sport and School

• Author / Creator

  Cormier, Danielle L

• Grit—defined by Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, and Kelly (2007) as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals” (p. 1087)—has been studied extensively in a variety of achievement settings. Despite the interest that grit has received from researchers over the last decade, a critical conceptual question remains largely unexplored: namely, is grit better conceptualized and measured as a global (i.e., domain-general) construct or as a domain-specific construct? To address this question, this research sought to determine if (a) self-reported grit levels would differ as a function of the situational context that people use when considering their grit responses, and (b) domain-specific measures of grit would explain variance in domain-matched achievement-related criterion variables beyond the variance explained by a global measure of grit. A sample of 251 (149 male, 102 female) intercollegiate (varsity) student-athletes (M age = 20.34 years, SD = 2.0) completed three versions of the Grit Scale (Duckworth et al., 2007): one version was based upon Duckworth et al.’s original domain-general conceptualization of grit (i.e., no specific situational context was provided to respondents), the second version was situated in the context of sport, and the third version was situated in the context of school (i.e., academic settings). Results of a repeated-measures MANOVA with follow-up mean-contrasts (i.e., dependent t-tests with Bonferroni corrections) revealed that student-athletes had significantly higher mean levels of grit in sport than in school and life in general (ps < .001). Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that the school measure of grit explained significant amounts of unique variance in Grade Point Average beyond the variance explained by the global measure of grit, and the sport measure of grit explained a significant amount of unique variance in perfectionistic strivings in sport beyond the variance explained by the global measure of grit (ps < .05). Collectively, the results lend support for the domain-specific conceptualization and measurement of grit in sport and school settings.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Sport Psychology
  • Grit
  • Domain-Specificity

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3R20SC4R

• License

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