Grit Scale

Duckworth, A. L., & Quinn, P. D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S). Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 166-174.

The Grit Scale: Grit-8-item.pdf


Table of Contents


Description


References


Description:

Purpose

The Grit Scale measures the individual's tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals.
Questions

Eight items are assessed using a Likert-like scale (1 = Not like me at all, 5 = Very much like me)
Sub-scales

There are two sub-scales: Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interests.
Domain

Personality Measures: "Self" Measures
Sample items

  • "I am a hard worker." (Perseverance of Effort)
  • "I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one." (Consistency of Interests)


References:

Scale:
Duckworth, A. L., & Quinn, P. D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S). Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 166-174.

Research Findings:
Gritty individuals pursue especially challenging aims over years and even decades. Grit demonstrates incremental predictive validity, over and beyond measures of talent, for objectively measured success outcomes. For instance, in prospective longitudinal studies, grit predicts surviving the arduous first summer of training at West Point, reaching the final rounds of the National Spelling Bee, retention in the U.S. Special Forces and both retention and performance among novice teachers, over and beyond domain-relevant talent measures such as IQ and physical fitness (Duckworth, Kirby, Tsukayama, Berstein, & Ericsson, 2010; Duckworth, et al., 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009; Robertson-Kraft & Duckworth, 2012). In cross-sectional studies, grit correlates with lifetime educational attainment and, inversely, lifetime career changes (Duckworth, et al., 2007).