Factor Focus: Persistence

The "Factor Focus" series is designed to review various noncognitive factors and their relevance to student success.

There was a time - not that long ago - when conversations at campuses across the country were abuzz with the concept of “grit.” Popularized by Angela Duckworth and colleagues, grit was framed as perseverance and passion for long-term goals (Duckworth et al., 2007). The idea resonated. After all, who WOULDN'T want students who persist in the face of difficulty?

Yet as quickly as grit gained traction, it also drew some meaningful criticism. Meta-analytic work by Credé, Tynan, and Harms (2017) demonstrated that grit overlaps heavily with factors already well established in the literature (e.g., conscientiousness) and showed little incremental predictive power beyond existing personality measures. Other scholars have raised concerns about whether the construct places too much emphasis on individual traits while overlooking structural and contextual barriers (Credé, Tynan, & Harms, 2017; Mehta, 2015).

For those of us working in student success, this debate is instructive. Perseverance clearly matters. At the same time, we must be careful not to reduce student outcomes to personality labels or imply that lack of success reflects lack of character. This tension is precisely why Persistence appears in the ISSAQ model, but in a way that differs meaningfully from grit.

What Is Persistence?

Within ISSAQ, Persistence refers to students’ tendency to continue working toward academic goals despite obstacles, setbacks, or temporary failure. It captures sustained effort in the presence of challenge, particularly in academic contexts.

Persistence is conceptually related to grit, but they are not synonymous. One challenge with grit is its multidimensionality. In Duckworth’s original formulation, grit includes both perseverance of effort and consistency of interests over time (Duckworth et al., 2007). These components are related but distinct, and subsequent work has demonstrated substantial overlap with conscientiousness and limited incremental predictive validity (Credé et al., 2017). Broad, multidimensional constructs can be useful descriptively, but translating them into interventions is difficult.

A similar issue can arise when discussing growth mindset, depending on how it is defined. Students who hold a growth mindset are more likely to accept feedback, embrace challenges, and persist through difficulty. However, these behaviors stem from a more precise belief - that ability can develop through effort (Dweck, 2006). That definitional clarity makes growth mindset relatively straightforward to target through intervention. Grit encompasses a wider range of tendencies, which makes it harder to operationalize in practical settings.

Persistence in ISSAQ is more narrowly focused on behavioral follow-through during academic difficulty. It reflects what students do when coursework becomes demanding, when they receive a disappointing grade, or when competing demands threaten their progress.

Persistence is also connected to the broader literature on self-regulation and academic resilience. Research on self-regulated learning suggests that students who monitor their performance, adjust strategies, and sustain effort are more likely to achieve academic goals (Zimmerman, 2002). Similarly, work on academic buoyancy and resilience emphasizes students’ ability to recover from routine setbacks rather than extraordinary adversity (Martin & Marsh, 2009).

Importantly, Persistence should not be interpreted as stubbornness or blind endurance. Effective persistence involves adaptive effort, help-seeking, and strategy adjustment. Students who persist productively are not merely trying harder; they are often trying differently.

How Does Persistence Impact Success?

There is little doubt that sustained effort matters for academic performance. Meta-analytic evidence demonstrates that conscientiousness and effort-related behaviors are among the strongest noncognitive predictors of academic outcomes (Poropat, 2009; Richardson et al., 2012). Although grit itself has shown only modest incremental predictive validity beyond conscientiousness (Credé et al., 2017), effort and persistence-related behaviors remain meaningfully associated with GPA and retention.

Persistence may be especially consequential during transitional periods, such as the first year of college or during enrollment in foundational coursework. Students inevitably encounter academic difficulty. The key question becomes whether they interpret these moments as signals to disengage or as challenges to navigate.

Research on attribution theory suggests that students who attribute setbacks to controllable, unstable factors such as effort or strategy are more likely to persist than those who attribute failure to fixed ability (Weiner, 1985). Similarly, growth mindset research indicates that students who believe ability can develop through effort are more likely to sustain engagement in the face of challenge (Dweck, 2006).

In practice, Persistence often operates as a bridge between intention and outcome. Many students enter college with clear goals. Persistence determines whether those goals survive early difficulty.

How Can We Foster Persistence?

If Persistence were purely a fixed personality trait, institutions would have limited influence. Fortunately, research suggests that effort beliefs, attributions, and strategy use are malleable (Dweck, 2006; Zimmerman, 2002).

Normalize Challenge as Part of Learning

Institutions can foster Persistence by framing academic difficulty as a normal and expected part of learning. Orientation programs, first-year seminars, and advising conversations can explicitly communicate that struggle is not a sign of inadequacy but a feature of growth. When students understand that setbacks are common, they are less likely to disengage prematurely.

Teach Adaptive Responses to Setbacks

Persistence is most effective when paired with strategy adjustment. Academic support programs can teach students how to analyze poor performance, identify gaps in preparation, and revise study approaches. Rather than encouraging students to “try harder,” institutions can model how to try differently.

Encourage Help-Seeking Behavior

Students who persist effectively often combine effort with resource utilization. Making tutoring, supplemental instruction, and office hours highly visible and accessible can lower the barrier to help-seeking. Framing help-seeking as a strength rather than a weakness reinforces adaptive persistence.

Align Academic Policies with Learning

Institutional policies can either support or undermine Persistence. Flexible revision opportunities, early alert systems, and course designs that allow recovery after early mistakes communicate that improvement is possible. In contrast, high-stakes, single-assessment structures may inadvertently discourage continued effort after early setbacks.

What Faculty Can Do to Support Persistence?

Explicitly discussing the learning process, sharing examples of revision and iteration, and providing feedback that emphasizes growth can encourage students to remain engaged. When faculty respond to early failure with guidance rather than judgment, they model adaptive persistence.

Simple practices such as offering exam wrappers, encouraging reflection after assessments, and providing opportunities for partial credit or revision can signal that effort over time matters. These instructional moves reinforce the idea that Persistence is not about innate toughness, but about sustained, supported engagement with challenging material.

Persistence, Grit, and Structural Context

Any discussion of persistence must be careful not to overemphasize individual responsibility while underemphasizing structural realities. One of the central critiques of grit is that, when framed uncritically, it can imply that students who struggle simply did not try hard enough. As mentioned, some scholars have cautioned that an exclusive focus on personal perseverance risks obscuring institutional barriers such as inequitable preparation, financial strain, work obligations, and experiences of marginalization (Kohn, 2014; Diemer et al., 2016).

In other words, we shouldn't look at students from traditionally underserved populations and blame the underserving on them.

From a student success perspective, this distinction matters. Encouraging Persistence without addressing context can inadvertently shift responsibility entirely onto students. A first-generation student balancing coursework with full-time employment is not simply facing a motivational challenge. They are navigating structural constraints that influence how, when, and whether persistence is even possible.

Within ISSAQ, Persistence is measured as a behavioral tendency, but it is interpreted within context. Institutions have a responsibility not only to cultivate adaptive persistence, but also to examine the environmental conditions that make persistence more or less feasible. Policies, financial aid structures, course sequencing, advising systems, and campus climate all shape whether students’ effort can translate into progress.

In this way, Persistence should be understood as relational rather than purely individual. Students persist within systems. When those systems are aligned with learning and equity, persistence becomes a supported behavior. When they are not, exhortations to “be grittier” ring hollow.

Conclusion

The popularity of grit renewed attention to perseverance in education. At the same time, critiques of grit remind us to avoid simplistic narratives that reduce success to individual character. Ironically, while grit and growth mindset arrived on the scene around the same time and both advanced conversations about holistic student success, emphasizing grit may indeed be indicative of a fixed mindset.

Within ISSAQ, Persistence reflects a more targeted and context-sensitive construct. It focuses on students’ continued effort in the face of academic difficulty while recognizing that effort unfolds within institutional environments that can either support or suppress it.

When institutions intentionally normalize challenge, teach adaptive responses, and design policies that allow recovery and growth, Persistence becomes less about personality and more about practice. In that context, sustained effort is not a heroic trait possessed by a few, but a supported behavior available to many.

References

• Credé, M., Tynan, M. C., & Harms, P. D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 492–511. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000102

• Diemer, M. A., Mistry, R. S., Wadsworth, M. E., López, I., & Reimers, F. (2016). Best practices in conceptualizing and measuring social class in psychological research. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 13(1), 77–113. (Useful for grounding structural context arguments.)

• 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), 1087–1101. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087

• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

• Kohn, A. (2014). The downside of “grit”: What really happens when kids are pushed to be more persistent. Phi Delta Kappan, 95(6), 8–13.

• Martin, A. J., & Marsh, H. W. (2009). Academic resilience and academic buoyancy. Educational Psychology Review, 21(4), 353–370. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-009-9123-7

• Poropat, A. E. (2009). A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014996

• Richardson, M., Abraham, C., & Bond, R. (2012). Psychological correlates of university students’ academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 353–387. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026838

• Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548

• Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner. Theory Into Practice, 41(2), 64–70. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2