Domain-Specific Grit, Identity, and Self-Compassion in Intercollegiate Athletes

Researchers and practitioners are often interested in determining whether domain-specific measures provide insight into how personality characteristics operate in achievement and performance contexts beyond the information provided by domain-general measures. This study investigated the benefits of adopting domain-specific approaches to measuring grit, self-compassion, and identity in sport and academic settings. Intercollegiate (varsity) student-athletes (N = 167) completed self-report domain-specific measures of grit and self-compassion in sport and school, domain-general measures of grit and self-compassion, and a measure of athletic and academic identity. Student-athletes demonstrated significantly higher grit in sport than on the school- and domain-general measures, and significantly higher athletic identity than academic identity. Self-compassion levels did not differ significantly across contexts. Regression results indicated that measures of academic grit and academic identity were stronger predictors of academic attainment than the domain-general measure of grit. Regression results also indicated that (a) larger differences in academic grit over sport grit, and larger differences in academic identity over athletic identity were associated with higher academic attainment and (b) larger differences in sport grit over academic grit, and larger differences in athletic identity over academic identity were associated with lower academic attainment. Results support the benefits of adopting domain-specific (over domain-general) approaches to studying grit and identity in sport and academic contexts; results did not support this position for the domain-specific measurement of self-compassion. We argue that practitioners will benefit from adopting domain-specific approaches to measuring grit and identity when attempting to understand how student-athletes think, feel, act, and perform in sport and academic settings.