Testing construct redundancy : resilience, grit, hardiness, and mental toughness

Abstract

Given the possible conceptual and content overlap between resilience, grit, hardiness, and mental toughness, it is important to investigate whether or not they are redundant constructs. As such, the primary purpose of my research, was to empirically determine whether resilience, grit, hardiness, and mental toughness represent construct redundancy. I assessed the content, construct and criterion validity of resilience, grit, hardiness, and mental toughness. The main findings of the three validity analyses indicated that there seems to be a strong argument which suggests that the four constructs are largely redundant (even though there is some evidence of their unique contributions). It showed that a common General Resiliency Factor exists across all four constructs of interest. While the group factors and the dimensions provided unique variances, this may be as a result of each construct author describing the larger construct of “Resilience” from different points of view.