Objective
To explore the impact of grit quality on innovation ability and analyze the mechanism of social support perception and learning interest among college students.
Methods
The Grit Scale, the Innovative Behavior Scale, the Social support perception Scale, and the Learning Interest Scale were used to investigate 472 Chinese undergraduate students in school, and chain mediation test and Bootstrap analysis were applied.
Results
(1) Grit and Social support perception (r = 0.428, P < 0.01), learning interest (r = 0.601, P < 0.01), and innovation ability (r = 0.491, P < 0.01) are significantly positively correlated; Social support perception is significantly positively correlated with learning interest (r = 0.503, P < 0.01) and innovation ability (r = 0.416, P < 0.01); learning interest is significantly positively correlated with innovation ability (r = 0.536, P < 0.01); (2) Social support perception and learning interest play a partial mediating role between grit and innovation ability, and the mediating effect is composed of three paths: "grit → Social support perception→ innovation ability", "grit → learning interest → innovation ability", and "grit → Social support perception→ learning interest → innovation ability". The effect size of these three paths accounts for 13.50%, 30.66%, and 8.39%, respectively.
Conclusion
This study shows that grit quality helps to improve college students' innovation ability, and this effect can be achieved by improving the ability to perceive social support and enhancing interest in learning.