Journal of College Student Development

Purpose is defined as a longstanding aim that is personally meaningful but also involves a desire to contribute to the world beyond the self (Damon, Menon, & Bronk, 2003). Research suggests that purpose is a key developmental task (Bronk, Hill, Lapsley, Talib, & Finch, 2009; Damon, 2009) as well as a major contributor to thriving (Damon et al., 2003; Bundick, Yeager, King, & Damon, 2010). Purpose is associated with positive outcomes including achievement, hope, life satisfaction, gratitude, compassion, and identity development (Bronk et al., 2009; Bronk, 2011; Damon et al., 2003; Malin, Liauw, & Damon, 2017). Adolescence and young adulthood represent critical periods in purpose cultivation (Damon, 2009).

Along with youth purpose, Positive Youth Development researchers have become increasingly concerned with character. Grit is an aspect of performance character that can be defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals" (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007, p. 1087). Grit has been linked with outcomes such as academic achievement in college students and educational attainment among adults (Duckworth et al., 2007) as well as success in life (e.g., job retention; Eskreis-Winkler, Shulman, Beal, & Duckworth, 2014).

For all the importance placed on the notion of grit, it may be argued that grit is more likely to ensue when there is a worthy purpose—one that is worth fighting for. Indeed, research has suggested that youth purpose may promote academic engagement and motivation (Damon, 2009; Liang et al., 2017) in the face of academic pressures. With increasing reports of stress and mental health issues during the transition to college, purpose may be especially important during the college years (Eagan et al., 2017).

Despite this evidence that purpose provides motivation or grit to "stay the course," few researchers have explicitly examined the connection between grit and purpose among adolescents and college students. Malin et al. (2017) found significant, albeit small, correlations between grit and purpose in a sample of adolescents. In contrast, Vela, Smith, Whittenberg, Guardiola, and Savage (2018) did not find significant associations between grit and commitment to purpose, controlling for other positive psychology variables like hope, in their study of Latinx college students. Finally, Hill, Burrow, and Bronk (2016) examined a "purpose commitment hypothesis" through two studies of college students that demonstrated [End Page 361] contemporaneous and longitudinal associations between grit and purpose, in which purpose predicted future grit. Taken together, evidence on the association between grit and purpose is inconsistent, and more research is needed to better understand the associations between purpose and grit among college students.

It is important to note that developmental researchers recognize that an individual's character and identity qualities (e.g., purpose and grit) and ability to act purposefully or morally are not static traits or virtues that define a person (Lerner & Callina, 2014; Nucci, 2017). Rather, character development relies on a myriad of interacting systems (e.g., gender, ethnicity, sense of self, connection to supportive others, life experiences, and situational factors) that continuously and mutually impact one another within contexts. Thus, we cannot make assumptions about whether purpose and grit are consistent across contexts (Lerner & Callina, 2014); rather, we examined the connection between these at one point in time.

In sum, results of this study build on previous research by examining associations between purpose and grit in a sample of college students from three universities. Our primary research question was whether greater commitment to purpose would be predictive of greater levels of grit. Despite mixed empirical evidence, we hypothesized that higher levels of purpose would predict higher levels of grit after controlling for demographic variables. That is, our findings were expected to conform to the "purpose commitment hypothesis" (Hill et al., 2016); students will demonstrate the will (grit), when they have the way (purpose).