Virtual reality (VR), an emergent technology, affords experiential content delivery in education by evoking emotive responses in users, which can be prohibitive via traditional media. This thesis explores VR for the development of grit – passion and perseverance, which are essential characteristics in education and long-term success. The research proposes design strategies to stimulate senses for emotional engagement and a physiological response. In the project, two interactive environments position the user in emotional states to build passion and perseverance. To develop passion, the virtual world is designed to engage in creativity using 3D-spatial audio and visual effects. In contrast, to build perseverance users are exposed to a challenging environment that requires them to overcome and positively associate frustration with growth. This thesis demonstrates the potential of design for higher sense-stimulation applied through VR in education.

Integrated primary care has been incorporated into a variety of healthcare settings. The benefits of these services are empirically supported by a plethora of studies, which highlight the integration of behavioral and physical healthcare to be beneficial for both patient and healthcare providers. Integrated care models are typically incorporated in Veterans Affairs hospitals, general primary care facilities, and community clinics. Community-based clinics, such as safety-net clinics, typically serve underrepresented populations, and research has shown several mental and physical health disparities to exist among minority populations. Further, the minority stress model posits that distal and proximal minority-based stress processes can result in a cascade of negative health outcomes, such as increased symptomology or poor health-management behaviors. Although minority stressors can lead to this series of consequences, several community and personal strengths may serve as protective factors for marginalized individuals. These processes may occur within safety-net primary care, considering that the populations of interest are underserved. Black patient populations face numerous barriers to healthcare, such as racism, discrimination, and provider bias. Prior literature has shown that prior experiences of racism result in poorer mental and physical health outcomes for Black patient populations. Further, these outcomes have been shown to negatively impact healthcare attitudes and behaviors. The current study aimed to examine how aspects of the minority stress model may operate within safety-net primary care services for Black patient populations. It was hypothesized that racism would predict poorer mental health, which would negatively impact provider trust, and therefore predict lower medication adherence. Using a strengths-based approach, grit and social support were hypothesized to serve as personal and collective buffers to this series of relationship. A path analysis showed that racism significantly predicted mental health, which predicted poorer provider trust; however, the last path of this model, provider trust to medication adherence, was not found to be statistically significant. Thus, the path analysis was broken up into a series of mediations, which explored the relationship between racism and both provider trust and medication adherence through mental health. Mental health was found to mediate the relationship from racism to provider trust and from racism to medication adherence. The moderated mediation effect of social support was found to be non-significant for all mediations, except that grit was moderated the mediation between racism to medication adherence through mental health. These results showed grit served as a personal strength to dampen the associated effects of racism, which may suggest improving intrinsic attitudes and motivation towards long-term health related goals may increase treatment adherence behaviors. Results from this study also confirm the importance of integrated primary care services, as the data suggested high rates of mental health problems, which typically go underreported among Black patients in healthcare settings.

The focus of this dissertation is exploring personality factors that impact performance within a small insurance agency. The primary research question is, what is (or are) the best personality factor(s), sub-facets, or constructs, that contribute to increased performance within an insurance agency. Three of the Five-Factor Model dimensions, extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience along with grit and hardiness were examined, as well as their sub-facets. Grit and hardiness were not found to add additional explanation of the variance while five of the sub-facets were found to better explain the variance over the composite dimensions.

Creativity research is an underdeveloped area of educational psychology. For example, studies of students’ creativity as a predictor of academic achievement are uncommon in the field. Moreover, perseverance—which is an integral part of the definition of creativity (Sternberg, 2012)—is not typically measured in creativity research. To address these issues, the current study sought to discern within an academic context whether perseverance serves as a mediating factor between creativity and academic achievement. Two undergraduate student samples (N = 817; N = 187) participated in a survey measuring their creativity and perseverance. This multiple manuscript dissertation sought to examine the psychometric properties of a measure of creativity: the Runco Ideational Behavior Scale (RIBS) and a measure of perseverance: the Grit Scale and to explore the relationships between creativity, perseverance, academic motivation, and academic achievement. Study 1 found that the RIBS had a correlated two-factor structure with two subscales: the Scatterbrained Subscale and the Divergent Thinking Subscale. Grit had a correlated two-factor structure reflecting interest and effort, and this reinforced previous findings regarding this scale These two scales hold promise as measures of the creative process. Study 2 found that although traditional motivation measures consistently predicted grades, grit only predicted grades in one sample, and creativity had no relationship with grades. Creativity appears to be orthogonal to academic achievement as measured by grades. There was evidence that grit can mediate the relationships between motivation and grades, but only in one sample. This research shares the limitations of other self-report surveys, but the psychometrics behind the measures were strong. Future research should continue to examine creativity and perseverance as important noncognitive constructs in academic contexts especially among diverse populations.

This study concerns the use of character education practices in schools and how these practices can be integrated into the art education curriculum to benefit students from urban high-poverty backgrounds. I conducted a document analysis of research in character education referring to methods of integrating character education skills into classroom practice. I identified character education programs that provide instruction in the areas of the emotional resources that Payne (2013) suggests that students from high-poverty backgrounds lack. Then, I made connections between how these identified character education skills align to the studio habits of mind (Hetland, 2013) that the visual arts have been suggested to develop in students to create guidelines for art educators to implement in their classrooms.

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Forskning i kognitiv psykologi har påvisat att testbaserad inlärning genererar bättre hågkomst jämfört med att läsa om ett inlärningsmaterial. Detta fenomen kallas för testeffekten. Denna studie undersökte skillnader i hågkomst mellan testbaserad inlärning och repeterad läsning för olika tidsintervall, samt huruvida individuella variationer avseende arbetsminneskapacitet och personlighetsdragen ‘need for cognition’ och grit relaterar till testeffekten. 182 svenska gymnasieelever deltog i studien. Materialet som användes för att mäta testeffekten var 60 swahili-svenska ordpar. Varje deltagare exponerades för hälften av ordparen genom testbaserad inlärning, och den andra hälften genom repeterad läsning. Tre hågkomsttest utfördes (direkt efter inlärning, en vecka efter och fyra veckor efter) med både ordpar som inte hade testats tidigare (unika ordpar) och ordpar som var med i föregående hågkomsttest (som tillsammans med de unika ordparen utgör ackumulerade ordpar). Resultaten uppvisade en signifikant testeffekt vid samtliga hågkomsttest för både unika och ackumulerade ordpar. En regressionsanalys visade att arbetsminneskapacitet, ‘need for cognition’ och grit, varken var för sig eller tillsammans, hade någon signifikant inverkan på testeffektens magnitud. Resultaten indikerar att testeffekten är robust för olika tidsintervall, samt att den är likvärdigt fördelaktig för personer som skiljer sig åt avseende arbetsminneskapacitet, ‘need for cognition’ och grit, som har visats påverka inlärning i flera andra sammanhang. Dessa resultat adderar till den växande mängd vetenskapliga belägg som talar för testeffektens effektivitet och lämplighet som inlärningsmetod. / Research in cognitive psychology has provided evidence for retrieval practice as superior for retention compared to reading a to-be-learned material. This phenomenon is called the testing effect. The current study investigated differences in retrieval achieved by retrieval practice and by reading at different time intervals, and whether individual differences in working memory capacity and the personality characteristics ‘need for cognition’ and grit is related to the testing effect. The sample consisted of 182 Swedish students in upper-secondary school. The to-be-learned material was 60 Swahili-Swedish word-pairs. Each participant was exposed to half of the word-pairs by testing, and the other half by reading. Three retention tests followed (directly after learning, one week later and four weeks later) consisting of word-pairs not previously tested (unique word-pairs) as well as word-pairs from previous retention tests (which together with the unique word-pairs constitutes the accumulated word-pairs). Significant testing effects were found at each retention test for both unique and accumulated word-pairs. A regression analysis showed that working memory capacity, need for cognition and grit, neither separately nor combined, had a significant impact on the magnitude of the testing effect. The results indicate that the testing effect is robust for different time intervals, and that it is equally beneficial across individual differences in working memory capacity, need for cognition and grit, each of which has been shown to affect learning in other contexts. These results add to the growing amount of scientific support for the effectiveness and appropriateness of the testing effect as a learning method.

By 2043, its projected that there will not be one single racial or ethnic group that would dominate the minority group (Tennessee Higher Education Commission, 2016). However, the number of Hispanics grew 230% from 2000 to 2014, representing an 8.6% of the national's youth (Tennessee Higher Education Commission, 2016). Hispanic population in states like California, New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona constitutes more than 30% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). However, in Tennessee, it only constitutes a 5.20%. Going further, in the Tri-Cities it constitutes a 2.34% of the population. Since states with larger Hispanic communities can provide a variety of resources, experiences, and support organization that a state with a small percentage might not consider in providing or may not be able to provide, this research tries to identify what factors influence individuals' decision to go to higher education. By doing so, we will be able to identify the areas that need more attention to better serve the population. To get this information, we obtained IRB approval to send our survey to ETSU Hispanic students. It is expected to see that the students whose parents have obtain an education past high school will be more encouraged to attend to higher education, than those whose parents earned less than a high school diploma. It is also expected to find that the student’s grit, hardiness, and motivation to lead will vary according to the grades that the students had in the United States, finally it is expected to find that students’ grit, hardiness, and motivation to lead will depend on whether or not they are a first generation student.

Background. Career success can be examined from an objective perspective by assessing tangible measures of success, such as salary, or from a subjective perspective by examining an individual’s reflections of their own career. While previous literature has identified characteristics of pharmacists that contribute to professional success, there is a lack in literature regarding whether certain traits or job-related characteristics may predict success. Purpose and Objectives. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of grit and work engagement on career success among practicing pharmacists in the United States (U.S.). A secondary objective is to identify how pharmacists describe career success. Methods. This cross-sectional study was conducted through an anonymous, online survey distributed to pharmacists throughout the U.S. The 65-question survey included the Grit-S, UWES-9, and SCSI scales to measure grit (goal-oriented resilience), work engagement with positive emotions, and subjective career success, respectively. The survey captured demographics, included validity questions, and asked open-ended questions to describe career success. After validity testing, multiple regression analysis was performed using SPSS® to examine the impact of grit and work engagement on subjective career success. Open-ended responses underwent conventional content analysis. Results. 586 survey responses were included in the data analysis. Multiple regression analysis revealed that both work engagement (p < 0.001, β = 0.52) and grit (p < 0.001, β = 0.18) uniquely accounted for variation in subjective career success, with the variables collectively explaining 36.7% of the variation (R = 0.6060, p < 0.001). Work engagement is a stronger predictor than grit, supported by the comparison of the standardized coefficient. However, grit is not a significant moderator of the relationship between work engagement and success (ΔR2 = 0.001, p = 0.437). Qualitative analysis indicated that the three most common themes pharmacists employed to describe career success included “satisfaction” (29.1%), “impact on patient care” (22.7%), and “impact on students” (16.7%), while “financial compensation” (4.2%) and “leadership” (1.1%) were among the least common themes utilized to describe success. Conclusion. The findings indicate that cultivating grit and encouraging a positive work-related mindset among pharmacists may lead to their potential career success. By identifying factors or concepts that can be predictors of professional success among pharmacists, we may provide pharmacy practice sites with information to spark conversations between pharmacists and management leaders regarding long-term planning and career goals.

This dissertation consists of two projects. Project 1 is comprised of two systematic review studies in which self-report measures of adult characterological resilience were identified and summarized. In Study 1, 51 personality-based instruments across five personality-based resilience constructs (ego-strength, grit, hardiness, mental toughness, and resilience) were identified. Information for each measure inclusive of measure title, construct, item count, factors, response scale and items, scoring method, and score range was summarized. In Study 2, 1,322 articles were identified that described 1,193 studies and 1,351 participant samples who completed between one and four of these resilience measures. Measure use frequency and contextual use information related to study and sample attributes are summarized. Project 2 is a series of meta-analyses that were conducted to investigate the psychometric properties of scores on the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) reported in 149 studies of adult participants. Reliability generalization methods are used to summarize 86 observations of internal consistency (mean Cronbach’s α = .86) and validity generalization methods are used to summarize eight observations of convergent validity (Mr = .61). Concurrent validity is also investigated via validity generalization methods for the most frequently observed mental health correlates of BRS scores. For each set of mental health measures, an estimated summary effect was calculated (anxiety, Mr = -.47; depression, Mr = -.49; optimism, Mr = .44; social support, Mr = .24; and stress, Mr = -.53). Of the significant moderators conducted for concurrent validity estimates, the largest was sample category (accounting for 100% of the variance in the observed correlations between the BRS and measures of social support). Geographic location and participant age, accounted for 55%, and 24%, of the variation in the observed correlations between the BRS and significantly moderated the relation between the BRS and perceived stress. Discussion for both projects include how the obtained relate to resilience theory, and the potential broader implications of these findings. Also based upon these reviews and meta-analyses, the challenges of resilience measure use are discussed and observations/recommendations are provided.