We tested the domain-specificity or domain-generality of academic diligence in middle-school students using the Academic Diligence Task (ADT), a performance task that assesses effort on tedious problems in the face of digital distractions. Students in 8th grade (N = 439) were randomly assigned to individually complete a math, verbal, or spatial ADT or to a combination of all three. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested domain-generality, as did the fact that ADT scores in a given domain did not differentially predict academic achievement in that domain. Results indicated that all three ADTs had adequate external and predictive validity, but convergent validity varied. Whereas both math and verbal ADT scores correlated with teacher-reports of grit and self-control, only math scores consistently correlated with self-reports of the same constructs; these measures did not correlate with spatial ADT scores. Thus, the math ADT is the best performance measure of diligence, followed by the verbal ADT.

我们使用“学业勤奋任务”（ADT）测试了中学生在学业勤奋方面的领域特定性或领域一般性，该任务旨在评估面对数字干扰时对乏味问题所做的努力。八年级学生（N = 439）随机分配，以分别完成数学，语言或空间ADT或全部三项的组合。验证性因素分析建议采用领域通用性，给定领域的ADT分数并不能以不同的方式预测该领域的学术成就。结果表明，所有三种ADT具有足够的外部和预测效度，但收敛效度却有所不同。数学和言语的ADT分数都与教师的毅力和自我控制报告相关，而只有数学分数与相同结构的自我报告始终相关。这些测量值与空间ADT得分无关。因此，数学ADT是最好的勤奋表现量度，其次是言语ADT。