The Academic Grit Scale (AGS-12) is a psychometric personality test. It was created and developed by Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, and Kelly in 2007 and is a scale for measuring individuals’ grit, primarily in academic settings, but also in the broader field of education.

Purpose of the Scale

The Academic Grit Scale aims to measure adolescents’ grit, particularly within the academic domain, and to improve on the potential weaknesses of existing measurements by emphasizing adolescents’ determination to overcome adversity and respond as effectively as possible to academic demands.

Question Scoring

The Academic Grit Scale consists of 12 questions, answered on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all gritty) to 5 (very gritty). Students are asked to respond meaningfully to the questions by evaluating how well they are able to overcome difficulties or how persistent they are in facing potential challenges.

Statistical Analysis

Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS. The structure of the questionnaire includes a 5-point Likert scale where 1 indicates strong disagreement and 5 indicates strong agreement. Participants assess the degree to which they can face difficulties or answer questions related to their willingness to deal with potential challenges. Respondents answer these 12 questions, and the total score is calculated as the average of the responses for each individual. Responses are provided by both students and their parents.

Validity & Reliability

The scale was shown to have relatively high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha equal to 0.84. When the scores of all 12 questions were summed, the resulting total score was significantly correlated with the Grit-O scale, providing evidence for the convergent validity of the new scale. Overall, the Academic Grit Scale demonstrated improved validity compared to general grit measures.

The Academic Grit Scale was not initially available in Greek. For this reason, an English philology professor was asked to translate the questionnaire items into Greek. Then, the translated statements were back-translated into English by another English teacher to ensure that the translated items retained their original meaning. This process was supervised by the author of the present study in collaboration with two psychologists with certified English language proficiency. The translation was carried out by English philology professors Drakopoulou and Antoniou, and the psychologists Kouloumenta and Christidis (Mitsopoulou et al., 2013).

References

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087.
Mitsopoulou, E., Kafetsios, K., Karademas, E., Papastefanakis, E., & Simos, P. G. (2013). The Greek Version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale: Testing the Factor Structure, Reliability and Validity in an Adult Community Sample. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 35, 123–131.