Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance - U.S. Department of ...

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measured. Further, these resources can also be conceptualized in terms of dispositions or
processes. Measuring academic mindsets, for instance, could involve assessing beliefs about
effort and intelligence, academic goals, or feelings of belonging. Similarly, measuring effortful
control could involve examining executive functions, self-discipline, self-control, or delay of
gratification, each of which has important differences. Strategies and tactics reflect both ability
to plan and ability to monitor goals and progress. Many measures also capture the protective
factors and positive assets that can contribute to students’ resilience in the face of adversity.
Thus, in measuring these psychological resources, it is important to understand that they are
multifaceted and require specific questions or techniques for each component skill or attribute.
Measurement Approaches: Methods, Examples, and Tradeoffs
This section reviews the major approaches to measuring these constructs—self-report, informant
report, school records, and behavioral task performance. For each approach, we describe the
method or methods involved, discuss some illustrative examples, and lay out tradeoffs of the
approach. There is no “right” answer or best approach; rather, different methods will be relevant
depending on the purposes of measurement, the context of measurement, and the resources
available. As each method captures different facets of these constructs and has particular
advantages and disadvantages, it can often be expedient to “triangulate” among multiple
methods.
Self-Report
Methods. Perhaps the most familiar and widely used measurement approach for noncognitive
factors is self-report. In such measures, participants typically respond independently to a set or
sets of items that ask for ratings of their perceptions, attitudes, goals, emotions, and beliefs. Selfreport
can be used to measure dispositional constructs. For example, researchers can examine
consistency in participant’s ratings to determine the strength of the belief or skill. Self-report can
also be used to measure process constructs; for example, in the Experience Sampling Method
(ESM), participants typically carry around a handheld device that “beeps” them at random
intervals, prompting self-report of experiences in that moment (e.g., Hektner, Schmidt, &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2007). Such data can be used to make inferences about emotions, thoughts,
and behaviors within and across specific situations.
Some example measures. Here we discuss a handful of well-known and well-validated
instruments. For comprehensive reviews of self-report instruments in these domains, see Atkins-
Burnett, Fernandez, Akers, Jacobson, and Smither-Wulsin (2012), Duckworth and Kern (2011),
Hoyle and Davisson (2011), Dweck et al. (2011), and Snipes et al. (2012). As a first example,
Exhibit 7 shows Duckworth et al.’s (2007) validated self-report Grit Scale measure. These
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