Contribution
A catalogue: the original self-report scales of basic or fundamental psychological need fulfillment for a healthy general population, with each scale’s theory, need states, domain, structure, response format and validation, from 1976 to 2023. Its use is as a finding aid and as a list of the field’s measurement faults, which it states plainly. It does not evaluate any scale’s validity beyond the steps the developers reported.
Key insight
The instruments are where the field’s conceptual distinctions get made or lost. Four states are distinguished in theory (Table 1): satisfaction and frustration, which are experiences, and support and thwarting, which are conditions in the social environment. The scales mostly measure the first, often mix the others into it, and the oldest and most used sometimes label a reverse-worded satisfaction item “frustration”. “If our review highlights one key point, it is the urgent need to reduce this ambiguity and confusion” (§5).
Assumptions
- Scope (§2.2). Healthy general populations in a social context; scales for migrants, refugees, patients, extreme conditions and technology-mediated fulfillment are excluded (§4.7). English-language, peer-reviewed papers; Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, ProQuest.
- A scale is “original” if a study developed and validated it; adapted versions are “secondary” (§2.2).
- The review takes no position on the one-dimensional versus two-dimensional model: “We neither endorse nor critique this theoretical shift … the evidence remains inconclusive” (§5).
Key results
- Counts (§3). 121 eligible studies: 32 primary, describing 31 original scales (the BMPN has two), and 89 secondary studies adapting 20 of them. 23 scales are SDT-based, 8 on alternative theories (Murray, Maslow, ERG, the Psychology of Working Theory, DRAMMA).
- Most cited (§3.1), Web of Science and Scopus on 21 August 2023: the BNSW-S (Deci et al. 2001; 1,045 and 1,142), the BPNSFS (Chen et al. 2015; 1,038 and 1,114), the “Sheldon scale” (Sheldon et al. 2001; 819 and 1,069).
- States measured (§3.2.2). Satisfaction only, 21; satisfaction and frustration, 4 (BPNSFS, GNSF, NSFS, PNSS-S); support, 3; frustration only, 1 (PNFS-PA, Chung et al. 2020); thwarting, 1 (PNTS, Bartholomew et al. 2011); support and thwarting, 1 (IBQ, Rocchi et al. 2017). “All the alternative questionnaires exclusively focused on assessing need satisfaction.”
- History (§3.1). Thwarting enters the scales in 2011 (Bartholomew et al.), satisfaction-and-frustration in 2015 (Chen et al.), frustration alone in 2020. “Need unfulfillment” (Bhavsar et al. 2020) was not confirmed as a separate dimension.
- Needs (Table 4). Autonomy in 27 scales, relatedness 24, competence 23; more than 30 others appear once or a few times (self-esteem 2, novelty 2, safety 2, morality 1, meaning 1, and so on).
- Structure (§3.2.3). Most scales have three factors (15); seven have six; items range from 6 to 68. Unipolar response scales 14, bipolar 15.
- Validation (§3.3). Content validity assessed in 15 SDT studies and 5 alternative ones; quantitative content analysis in five; face validity never quantified. CFA in 23 studies, nine without prior exploratory analysis; one CFA on the same sample as the EFA. Some CFAs had fewer than 100 respondents (DRAMMA, 85; one of BPNS’s, 81; one of GNSF’s, 84).
- Faults (§4.2.2–4.3.3).
- “Satisfaction/frustration” and “support/thwarting” “were at times used interchangeably” (Costa et al. 2015; Bhavsar et al. 2020 named).
- Double-barrelled items mixing frustration and thwarting, e.g. “I feel incompetent (frustration) because of the things I am told (thwarting)”, adapted from the PNFS-PA.
- Items meant for satisfaction that assess thwarting, e.g. “There were people telling me what I had to do” in the BMPN (§4.3.3).
- The BPNSFS: Chen (2013)‘s version measured satisfaction only, with four positively and four negatively coded items per need; “the 12 negatively coded items were repurposed to represent need frustration” (§4.2.2). The review quotes Murphy et al. 2023 (p. 129): the distinction “is likely primarily driven by item-keying direction”.
- Ten satisfaction scales use reverse-scored negative items, which Sheldon and Gunz read as “absence of satisfaction” and Van den Broeck et al. as “need frustration” (§4.3.3).
- Recommendations. “Positive descriptions of need frustration rather than negative descriptions of need satisfaction” (§4.3.3). The IBQ and the GNSF are named “examples of good practice” (§5).
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Most need scales measure satisfaction only; frustration and thwarting each have few dedicated instruments | strong | counts over 31 scales (§3.2.2), within the search’s scope |
| C2 | The field uses satisfaction/frustration and support/thwarting interchangeably in places | moderate | two named examples (§4.2.2); no count of how often |
| C3 | The BPNSFS frustration scales are repurposed negatively coded satisfaction items | strong | the scale’s history (§4.2.2), consistent with Murphy et al. 2023 |
| C4 | There is no consensus on what makes a need basic | moderate | the spread of typologies and terms (§§1, 4.1.1); asserted, not measured |
| C5 | The IBQ and GNSF are examples of good scale construction | weak | item wording and response format, with stated caveats (§5); no psychometric comparison |
Concepts
- Need fulfillment — the review’s umbrella for all four states.
- Need satisfaction / frustration — experiences, “intrapersonal”.
- Need support / thwarting — the social environment’s “active and direct way of fostering/undermining one’s needs”, “interpersonal” (§4.2.2, after Vansteenkiste & Ryan 2013).
- Need dissatisfaction, need unfulfillment — low satisfaction without frustration; the latter “results from need-indifferent interpersonal behaviors” (§4.2.3). Not established as a separate dimension.
- Cross-paths — support with frustration, or thwarting with satisfaction, e.g. “The people in my life pressure me to do things their way” with “I do things the way I want” (§4.2.2).
Connections
- Murphy et al. 2023 (LIT-1978): adopted for the BPNSFS. Murphy was one of the review’s two named reviewers.
- Bartholomew et al. 2011 (LIT-1954): the PNTS, the one thwarting scale, and the first to bring “the darker side” into the scales.
- Sheldon et al. 2001 (LIT-1966): the “Sheldon scale”, ten candidate needs; noted as having failed to extract its expected ten factors and proceeded anyway (§4.5.3).
- Elson et al. 2023, “the toothbrush problem”, as the motive.
- Vansteenkiste, Ryan and Soenens 2020 (LIT-561): the nine criteria are mentioned (§1, “five ‘basic’ and four ‘associated’ criteria”) and not applied.
Bearing on the record
- QUESTION-369 (what would show a need is a need). The review does not answer it and says the field has not: “a current lack of consensus of what constitutes a fundamental psychological need” (§1), with typologies differing on innateness, universality and interrelatedness (§4.1.1). It adds one fact the question can use: every scale it found is a self-report of experience or of perceived environment, and none measures a functional deficit. So the question’s proposed answer, “a functional deficit, not a report, that follows thwarting of the candidate need”, has no instrument among the 31. The review also records that candidate needs are proposed because “the frustration of ARC alone may not adequately predict individuals’ ill-being” (§4.1.2): the well-being route the question doubts, stated as the motive.
- QUESTION-131. The review’s four-cell table (Table 1) is the psychology’s version of the question’s rows, with one difference: it places thwarting in the environment and frustration in the person, where the question places thwarting on a constituent’s demand. Its cross-paths (thwarting without frustration, frustration without thwarting) are the separations in each direction the question asks for, stated as examples, not shown. The review also says measures of external conditions “do not always predict personal experiences” (§1).
- THEORY-052. It corroborates Murphy et al.’s point that the BPNSFS frustration scale was not built for the two-dimensional construct, and adds that scales for frustration proper are few and recent (2020). It does not assess whether need frustration predicts psychopathology.
- THEORY filed from this reading: THEORY-1318 (Active), what the review counted and the faults it documents. It is also a second source for THEORY-1311.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice.
Limitations
- The search is narrow by design. Title words “need*” and one of six measurement words; English; healthy populations. Scales of need frustration in clinical samples are out of scope (§4.7).
- Descriptive only. No scale’s validity is tested or compared; the “good practice” verdict rests on wording and format.
- Small inconsistencies in the text. The overview is said to cover “1978 to the present” (§1), but the earliest scale is dated 1976 (§3.1, §4). The BMPN is classed SDT-based in Table 3 and counted among the “alternative questionnaires” for its autonomy, competence and relatedness items in §3.2.1. The conclusion’s “24 eligible primary studies based on SDT” squares with the 23 SDT scales only because one scale has two primary studies.
- Murphy et al.’s conclusion is restated more firmly than Murphy states it: they “deemed BPNSFS invalid for use as a measure of the dual-dimension theory precisely for this reason” (§4.3.3). Murphy et al. say “probably” and that the matter cannot be settled with existing data.
Open questions
- Would a frustration scale written with positive descriptions of frustration (the review’s recommendation) separate from satisfaction once keying is balanced?
- How should the midpoint of a bipolar frustration or thwarting scale be read (§4.3.4)? The review leaves it open.