Flexible and rigid persistence: Relations with passion, vitality, and intention to stay in university teachers

Passion and persistence are related constructs that have been perceived as key qualities for people to achieve their aims. While passion has been widely analyzed from a dualistic position, studies on persistence have rarely been focused on persistence regarding its quality. Thus, the aim of this study was twofold. Firstly, it aimed to analyze the relationships between flexible and rigid persistence, harmonious and obsessive passion, subjective vitality, and intention to stay in a sample of 201 university teachers from 20 universities. The secondary goal was to translate and assess the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Flexible and Rigid Persistence Scale. Overall, the findings supported the hypotheses tested. Regarding the first aim, we tested a structural equation model in which we hypothesized that harmonious passion would positively lead to flexible persistence and, to a lesser degree, to rigid persistence, and that obsessive passion would positively predict rigid persistence and negatively predict flexible persistence. In turn, both types of persistence would predict intention to continue teaching (activity outcome), but only flexible persistence would predict subjective vitality (life outcome). As expected, the structural equation model showed that harmonious passion for teaching predicted flexible persistence, while obsessive passion for teaching predicted rigid persistence and it was negatively related to flexible persistence. In turn, only flexible persistence predicted subjective vitality and intention to keep on teaching. Regarding the second goal of the study, results from exploratory structural equation modeling, reliability analysis, and multi-group exploratory structural equation modeling supported the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the scale in the educational context for university teachers. These results are partially consistent with those reported in the original version, and they lead to new research on the role of passion and persistence in education.