What you are to be, you are now becoming: The mediating role of grit between self-related metacognition and psychological well-being among colleges students in Hong Kong

Objectives: The study aims to understand the relationship between Hong Kong college students' self-related metacognition (i.e., thinking about one's own self-concept) and their psychological well-being with reference to the Rogerian Organismic Valuing Process Theory, in addition to examining the mediating effect of grit. One hundred twenty-nine local college students aged 18 and 25 were recruited to participate in the research.

Methods: The participants were required to complete an online Qualtrics survey which was comprised of a series of standardized questionnaires, including (1) Demographic Information; (2) Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI; Schraw & Dennison, 1994); (3) Self-concept Clarity Scale (SCC; Campbell et al., 1996); (4) Short Grit Scale (GRIT-S; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009); (5) Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being (Ryff PWB Scale; Ryff, 1996).

Results: Bivariate correlational analysis, simultaneous multiple regression analysis, and mediational analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between variables. Results revealed that (1) metacognitive knowledge (r = .33, p < .01) and self-concept clarity (r = .60, p < .01) were positively correlated with psychological well-being, (2) metacognitive knowledge was positively correlated with self-concept clarity (r = .24, p < .01) and both served as a significant predictor to PWB, (3) grit partially mediated between metacognitive knowledge to psychological well-being (Z = 3.09, p < .01), (4) grit partially mediated between self-concept clarity to psychological well-being (Z = 2.58, p < .05).

Conclusion: The results suggested that local college students who had better metacognitive knowledge and self-concept clarity were more likely to be grittier persons who may experience greater PWB. This shines a light on well-being interventions from metacognitive skill training to person-centered philosophy and motivational interviewing in educational and clinical settings to enhance the young adults' internal well-being resources for a positive personal growth. All rights reserved.