Longitudinal Relationships among Adolescent’s Grit, Parenting Attitudes, Self-esteem, and Creative Personality

This study examined the longitudinal relationship between grit and parenting attitudes/styles, relationships with teachers, adolescents’ self-esteem, and creative personality traits among first-year middle school students over five years using Korea Children and Youth Panel Study 2018 (KCYPS2018). After verifying unidimensionality of each construct and confirming that the assumptions of metric invariance were met across the five time points, a two-level growth model was constructed. The results of the analyses show that Korean adolescents' grit decreased over time, with a slightly non-linear pattern. Among the related variables, adolescents' perceptions of their parents' autonomy support, coercion, and inconsistency were statistically significantly associated with their grit. In particular, parental inconsistency and coercion negatively affected adolescents’ grit. As an individual characteristic of adolescents, self-esteem was positively related to grit, but creative personality traits reported by individuals were not statistically significant. Positive relationships with teachers also had a small but positive effect on adolescents' grit. Additionally, there were gender differences, with male students showing higher levels of grit compared to female students, although the reduction in grit over time was greater for male adolescents. From an educator's perspective, even though adolescents spend a significant amount of time at school, parenting attitudes have a substantial effect on their grit during this period, highlighting the importance of positive parenting and teachers' supportive relationship with the adolescents.