TY - JOUR
T1 - A Psychometric Evaluation of the Short Grit Scale
T2 - A Closer Look at its Factor Structure and Scale Functioning
AU - Gonzalez, Oscar
AU - Canning, Jessica R.
AU - Smyth, Heather
AU - MacKinnon, David P.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1311230 and the National Institute on Drug Abuse under Grants No. R37 DA09757 and No. UH2DA041713.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Hogrefe Publishing GmbH. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/7
Y1 - 2020/7
N2 - Grit, the passion and perseverance for long-term goals, has received attention from personality psychologists because it predicts success and academic achievement. Grit has also been criticized as simply another measure of self-control or conscientiousness. A precise psychometric representation of grit is needed to understand how the construct is unique and how it overlaps with other constructs. Previous research suggests that the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S) has several psychometric limitations, such as uncertain factor structure within and across populations, uncertainty about reporting total or subscale scores, and different assessment precision at low and high levels on the construct. We conducted modern psychometric techniques including parallel analysis, measurement invariance, extrinsic convergent validity, and Item Response Theory models on two American samples. Our results suggest that the Grit-S is essentially unidimensional and that there is construct overlap with the self-control construct. Subscale factors were the result of an item doublet, where two items had highly correlated uniquenesses, showed similar item information, and were more likely to exhibit measurement bias. Findings replicated across samples. Finally, we discuss recommendations for the use of the Grit-S based on the theoretical interpretation of the unidimensional factor and our empirical findings.
AB - Grit, the passion and perseverance for long-term goals, has received attention from personality psychologists because it predicts success and academic achievement. Grit has also been criticized as simply another measure of self-control or conscientiousness. A precise psychometric representation of grit is needed to understand how the construct is unique and how it overlaps with other constructs. Previous research suggests that the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S) has several psychometric limitations, such as uncertain factor structure within and across populations, uncertainty about reporting total or subscale scores, and different assessment precision at low and high levels on the construct. We conducted modern psychometric techniques including parallel analysis, measurement invariance, extrinsic convergent validity, and Item Response Theory models on two American samples. Our results suggest that the Grit-S is essentially unidimensional and that there is construct overlap with the self-control construct. Subscale factors were the result of an item doublet, where two items had highly correlated uniquenesses, showed similar item information, and were more likely to exhibit measurement bias. Findings replicated across samples. Finally, we discuss recommendations for the use of the Grit-S based on the theoretical interpretation of the unidimensional factor and our empirical findings.
KW - conscientiousness
KW - grit
KW - psychometrics
KW - self-control
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U2 - 10.1027/1015-5759/a000535
DO - 10.1027/1015-5759/a000535
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068526016
SN - 1015-5759
VL - 36
SP - 646
EP - 657
JO - European Journal of Psychological Assessment
JF - European Journal of Psychological Assessment
IS - 4
ER -