Exploring Changes in Youth Grit and Influencing Variables Using Latent Growth Modeling

The purpose of this study was to examine how grit changes over time in adolescence and to explore the time effects of influencing variables on grit. To do this, the 1st (2018) to 5th wave (2022) data of the 4th- and 7th-grade cohorts from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey 2018 were used for analysis. Latent growth models were explored to determine the most suitable model to figure out changing patterns of grit during this period, and contemporaneous and lagged effects of the influencing variables at each time point were tested as well. The main results were as follows. First, it was confirmed that the most suitable model among the various latent growth models was the piecewise growth model, which can reflect school transitions. Grit was observed to decline during the time of analysis. Second, it was found that adolescents’ academic enthusiasm and self-esteem had a significant positive contemporaneous effect on grit. It was also observed that at some time points, academic enthusiasm had a lagged effect that positively influenced grit in the following year, while self-esteem did not have a significant lagged effect. The perception of parental support had a significant positive contemporaneous effect on grit at some time points, with a significant lagged effect at some time points. The perception of teacher support had a significant positive contemporaneous effect on grit at some time points and a significant positive lagged effect on grit at some time points. The perception of friend support was found to have no significant contemporaneous effect, while there were significant negative lagged effects for grit at some points. Finally, the implications and recommendations of this study are discussed.