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THEORY-1311: The BPNSFS frustration scales measure low need satisfaction in negatively keyed form, not need frustration in the sense of active thwarting, so the separation of frustration from low satisfaction in BPNSFS data, and frustration's stronger link to ill-being there, is largely a keying artefact

2 min read

Properties4
StatusProposed
Tagspsychometrics, motivation
SourceLIT-1978 — The Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scales probably do not validly measure need frustration., LIT-1988 — Assessing basic/fundamental psychological need fulfillment: systematic mapping and review of existing scales to foster cumulative science
Bears onQUESTION-131 — How does structural frustration among jointly incompatible demands relate to operative thwarting of a constituent's demands, and under what conditions can one occur without the other?, QUESTION-369 — What would show that an experience is a basic psychological need, something an organism's functioning requires, rather than something that reliably raises reported well-being, when self-determination theory identifies needs by their effects on well-being and treats well-being as the presence of need satisfaction?

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Source

  • Murphy et al. (2023), LIT-1978, read in NOTE-1530: the argument and the eight-sample analyses.
  • Kermavnar et al. (2024), LIT-1988, read in NOTE-1509, §4.2.2: the scale’s history (“the 12 negatively coded items were repurposed to represent need frustration”).

What was actually shown

The history. Chen’s (2013) dissertation built the 24 items as a satisfaction measure, four positive and four negative items per need, and “tentatively concluded that the item pool did not support the creation of separate frustration scales” (Murphy et al., introduction). Chen et al. (2015, LIT-2000) presented the negative items as three frustration scales. Kermavnar et al. report the same history.

The content. The frustration items lack thwarting, the defining part of frustration in Vansteenkiste and Ryan (2013).

The structure and correlates are THEORY-1316’s: keying groups the items more strongly than need does, and the frustration items’ excess correlation with ill-being follows the keying of the ill-being measures.

The step not shown. From these, Murphy et al. conclude the split is “likely primarily a method artifact caused by different item keying directions”. They say themselves that when keying and construct are fully confounded “factor analyses are not able to provide information to fully adjudicate between these possibilities”. The structure is what keying alone would produce; it is also what a real construct perfectly aligned with keying would produce.

What this does not say

  • That the satisfaction scales are valid, or that a three-scale BPNSFS is. Murphy et al. raise a separate doubt about the autonomy scales.
  • That need frustration as a construct is unsupported. Frustration measured with thwarting content (the PNTS, Bartholomew et al. 2011) is a different instrument, not touched by this.
  • That every finding using the BPNSFS is an artefact. Findings that compare frustration with satisfaction, or that rest on frustration’s separate link to ill-being, are what it would undercut. Campbell et al. 2018 (LIT-1964) used the frustration items alone.

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