Research on grit indicates that perseverance positively predicts academic achievement. Yet, the mechanisms through which perseverance might lead to academic success remain less explored, particularly in cross-cultural research. The current study investigated such mechanisms by examining possible mediating effects of students’ use of self-regulated learning strategies (control, memorisation, and elaboration) on the predictive relation of students’ perseverance on their academic achievement, in students from East Asian and Anglo-Saxon English speaking Western countries. The sample came from the OECD PISA study and included 24,352 population-representative 15-year-old students from Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and the US. Results revealed that perseverance had a more positive association with achievement in East Asian cultures than Western cultures. Control strategy was stronger positive mediators of achievement in Western countries, whereas memorisation and elaboration strategy use and instrumental motivation more negatively mediated the effect of perseverance on achievement in Western countries.

The factorial structure of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) has been frequently studied in diverse samples but no study has examined its psychometric properties from large, population-based samples. In particular, important questions have not been addressed such as the measurement invariance properties across parental and offspring gender. We evaluated the PBI based on responses from a large, representative population-based sample, using an exploratory structural equation modeling method appropriate for categorical data. Analysis revealed a three-factor structure representing “care,” “overprotection,” and “autonomy” parenting styles. In terms of psychometric measurement validity, our results supported the complete invariance of the PBI ratings across sons and daughters for their mothers and fathers. The PBI ratings were also robust in relation to personality and mental health status. In terms of predictive value, paternal care showed a protective effect on mental health at age 43 in sons. The PBI is a sound instrument for capturing perceived parenting styles, and is predictive of mental health in middle adulthood.

Self-regulation is a crucial life skill. In particular, self-regulated learning (SRL) is an important factor in achieving academic success. Recent research has studied the association between SRL and growth mindset, a belief that emphasizes the importance of effort, perseverance, and the use of SRL strategies. Although recent research indicates positive associations, some findings are contradictory. This review systematically synthesized recent literature on the relationship between students’ growth mindset and SRL in educational settings (e.g., school, college and university students), based on 10 peer-reviewed empirical studies with 15 samples published in English between 2010 and 2023. The studies were coded using a coding scheme. All studies examined a direct relationship between a growth mindset and SRL. The results showed that having a growth mindset is positively associated with SRL strategies overall (r = 0.40). The systematic review then revealed that there are positive associations across all phases of SRL, although with substantial variation in the strengths of the association across studies (also supported by Q statistic, p < 0.001). The results further suggest that the operationalization of mindset measures and socioeconomic disadvantage may moderate the association between mindset and SRL; however, more research is needed on the moderating and mediating factors that affect the relationship between growth mindset and SRL strategy use. These findings suggest that promoting a growth mindset could be a promising factor in interventions designed to foster SRL. Future research could further explore this area of research by taking into account how different contexts and conditions influence this relationship, for example, whether this relationship vary for growth mindset in different school subjects.

With modern technological advances, distance education has become an increasingly important education delivery medium for, for example, the higher education provided by open universities. Among predictive factors of successful learning in distance education, the effects of non-cognitive skills are less explored. Grit, the dispositional tendency to sustain trait-level passion and long-term goals, has raised much research interest and gained importance for predicting academic achievement. The Grit Questionnaire, measuring Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interests, has been shown to be a reliable instrument in traditional university student populations. However, the measurement and predictive validity of this questionnaire is still unknown for adult distance education university students who differ from traditional students in various ways (e.g., having a wider range of student ages). Based on a sample of 2,027 students from a distance education university, this study assessed the psychometric properties of the two-factor structure grit measured by the Grit Questionnaire. The findings suggest that the short form of the Grit Questionnaire is a potentially useful assessment tool for measuring the grit construct for distance learning higher education and that the Consistency of Interests factor is especially relevant to consider the improvement of learning performance for distance education in terms of courses credit and exam attempts. The measurement precision of the Perseverance of Effort factor, however, should be improved in future research to provide higher measurement accuracy and broader item coverage.