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Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Youth and Adolescence 2/2024

22-09-2023 | Empirical Research

Sparking Virtuous Cycles: A Longitudinal Study of Subjective Well-Being and Grit During Early Adolescence

Auteurs: Tingdan Zhang, Daeun Park, Eli Tsukayama, Angela L. Duckworth, Liang Luo

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Youth and Adolescence | Uitgave 2/2024

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Abstract

In cross-sectional research, subjective well-being and grit are found to be positively correlated. Their mutually reinforcing effects are particularly relevant for youth entering early adolescence because, during this developmental period, both well-being and grit have been shown to predict consequential outcomes later in life. However, their mutual relation has not yet been investigated in early adolescence. This study, therefore, examined the possibility of a virtuous cycle linking subjective well-being and grit during early adolescence. Self-report questionnaires of grit and subjective well-being were completed by N = 5291 children in China (47.6% girls; initial Mage = 9.69, SDage = 0.59) on six occasions over 3 academic years. In random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs), within-person changes in grit predicted within-person changes in subjective well-being 6 months later, and vice versa. Notably, analyses revealed an asymmetry in this cycle: paths from subjective well-being to grit were stronger and more reliable than the converse. Likewise, facet-level analyses showed that the predictive power of the perseverance component (of grit) and the affective component (of subjective well-being), respectively, was greater than the passion and cognitive components, respectively. These findings highlight the potential of boosting happiness for catalyzing positive youth development and, in addition, foreground the utility of studying these composite constructs at the facet level.
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Voetnoten
1
Only seven studies (8%) among the 83 studies in the meta-analysis had time lags between measuring grit and subjective well-being (Hou et al., 2022). Several studies have reported substantial correlations between grit and subsequent subjective well-being facets or correlates (e.g., job satisfaction, depression) with intervals up to 3 years (Chandra et al., 2020; Jordan et al., 2018; Kleiman et al., 2013; O’Sullivan et al., 2019). However, these studies were not designed to test the relation between grit and subjective well-being and lacked control over potential causal variables. Only two short-term longitudinal studies were designed to directly examine whether grit has prospective effects on subjective well-being (Datu et al., 2021; Jiang et al., 2020). Using a daily diary design tracking grit and subjective well-being for 21 consecutive days, Jiang et al. (2020) found that daily grit promoted daily subjective well-being. The other study found that the perseverance facet of grit predicted life satisfaction 2 months later (Datu et al., 2021).
 
2
Subsets of the data have been used in prior work (Zhang et al., 2022); however, the research hypotheses, reported analyses, and conclusions made in this article do not overlap with those of other papers.
 
3
Specifically, 4318 students from Hebei, and 973 students from Beijing. Data collection location was dummy coded and used as a moderator. No significant moderation effect was found in the main analyses, so the two samples were combined together.
 
4
Specifically, parental education levels of Hebei students were collected from school records and those of Beijing students from parent surveys.
 
5
The within-person level includes measurement error as well as reliable within-person variance across time (Wilms et al., 2020).
 
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Metagegevens
Titel
Sparking Virtuous Cycles: A Longitudinal Study of Subjective Well-Being and Grit During Early Adolescence
Auteurs
Tingdan Zhang
Daeun Park
Eli Tsukayama
Angela L. Duckworth
Liang Luo
Publicatiedatum
22-09-2023
Uitgeverij
Springer US
Gepubliceerd in
Journal of Youth and Adolescence / Uitgave 2/2024
Print ISSN: 0047-2891
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-6601
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01862-y

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