Undergraduate students' motivational profiles before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of educational climate and trait self-control.

BACKGROUND: Universities faced important and sudden changes following the lockdown measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditional educational practices were disrupted as campuses were closed while distance learning was hastily adopted. AIMS: This study documents the evolution of university students' autonomous and controlled motivation for their studies following campus closures by relying on a person-centred perspective. More specifically, it examines motivation profiles and their temporal stability across two time points taken before and during the pandemic, while also considering the role of educational climate, trait self-control and control variables (sex and age) as predictors of profile membership. SAMPLE: A total of 1940 university students participated in this study by responding to online questionnaires at two time points, before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) the pandemic. METHODS: We relied on latent profile and latent transition analyses to estimate motivation profiles, their temporal stability and their predictors. RESULTS: A four-profile solution (Self-Determined, Moderately Motivated, Extrinsically Motivated, Amotivated) was selected and replicated at both time points. We observed a low degree of variability in profile membership over time, especially for the Amotivated profile. A need-supportive educational climate and trait self-control consistently predicted a greater likelihood of membership into more adaptative profiles (Self-Determined, Moderately Motivated). CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic did not drastically change the motivational profiles of university students. Nevertheless, educational climate and self-control appeared to 'protect' students against the endorsement of more problematic motivation profiles both before and during the pandemic, making them important targets for intervention.

Educational contexts that nurture students' psychological needs predict low distress and healthy lifestyle through facilitated self-control.

Psychological distress and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors are highly prevalent among undergraduate students. Importantly, numerous longitudinal studies show that these phenomena rise significantly during the first months of college and remain high thereafter. However, research identifying theory-driven mechanisms to explain these phenomena is lacking. Using two complementary statistical approaches (person- and variable-centered), this study assesses basic psychological needs (BPNs) and self-control as possible explanatory factors underlying the association between student's educational experience and multiple health-related outcomes. A total of 2450 Canadian undergraduates participated in this study study involving two time points (12 months apart; NTime1 = 1783; NTime2 = 1053), of which 386 participated at both measurement occasions. First, results from person-centered analyses (i.e., latent profile and transition analyses) revealed three profiles of need-satisfaction and frustration in students that were replicated at both time points. Need-supportive conditions within college generally predicted membership in the most adaptive profile. In turn, more adaptive profiles predicted higher self-control, lower levels of psychological distress (anxiety, depression), and healthier lifestyle behaviors (physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption). Second, results from variable-centered analyses (i.e., structural equation modeling) showed that the association between students' BPNs and health-related outcomes was mediated by self-control. In other words, high need satisfaction and low need frustration were associated with higher self-regulatory performance at Time 1, which in turn predicted a more adaptive functioning at Time 2. Overall, these findings help clarify the mechanisms underlying the association between college educational climate and students' health-related functioning. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-04019-5.

Pathways to Student Motivation: A Meta-Analysis of Antecedents of Autonomous and Controlled Motivations.

Students' self-determined motivation (acting out of interest, curiosity, and abiding values) is associated with higher academic well-being, persistence, and achievement. Self-determination theory posits that self-determined motivation is dependent on the satisfaction of three psychological needs (relatedness, competence, and autonomy), which are in turn facilitated through need-supportive behaviors from notable others. In this meta-analysis, conducted over 144 studies and more than 79,000 students, we sought to overview pathways to student motivation in order to verify (1) how do psychological needs rank in the strength of their prediction of self-determined motivation and (2) which autonomy-support providers (parents or teachers) are the most relevant for psychological need satisfaction in students and self-determined motivation. Results show that teacher autonomy support predicts students' need satisfaction and self-determined motivation more strongly than parental autonomy support. In addition, competence is the most positive predictor of self-determined motivation, followed by autonomy and then by relatedness.

Investigating how autonomy-supportive teaching moderates the relation between student honesty and premeditated cheating.

BACKGROUND: Cheating at the post-secondary level is a skewed phenomenon. While personality and environmental factors are associated with cheating, few studies account for the zero inflation when predicting cheating behaviour. AIM: In this study, we explore a person-situation interaction hypothesis where teacher autonomy support (AS) could modify the relation between students' honesty trait and premeditated cheating. SAMPLE: Participants were 710 college students and 31 teachers. METHODS: Teacher and student reports of teacher AS were collected and students also completed self-reports of honesty and premeditated cheating. RESULTS: Given that cheating had a zero-inflated negative binomial distribution, we can investigate two separate outcomes: likelihood of cheating and magnitude of cheating. Predictably, student honesty trait predicted lower likelihood and magnitude of cheating. AS, whether student- or teacher-reported, moderated the relation between honesty and likelihood of cheating. In low perceived AS teaching environments, student honesty was associated with cheating likelihood. However, there was no such relation in high perceived AS teaching environments. CONCLUSIONS: Students' honesty generally predicts lower cheating. However, the educational environment provided by the teacher influences the strength of this association. The less autonomy-supportive students perceive the educational environment, the more their personality is important in predicting the likelihood of cheating.

Transformational Leadership and Incivility: A Multilevel and Longitudinal Test.

This research examines group-level perceptions of transformational leadership (TFL) as negative longitudinal predictors of witnessing person-related (e.g., insults/affronts) and work-related (e.g., negation/intentional work overload) acts of incivility at work. Witnessing workplace incivility was also postulated to negatively predict employee need satisfaction. Data were collected among production employees in different Canadian plants of a major manufacturing company (N = 344) who worked for 42 different managers (Mgroup size = 9.76). Two waves of data collection occurred 1 year apart. Results from multilevel analyses showed that workgroups where managers were perceived to engage in more frequent TFL behaviors reported reduced levels of person- and work-related incivility 1 year later. However, group-level incivility did not predict change in group-level need satisfaction 1 year later. At the individual level, results showed that witnessing higher levels of person-related incivility than one's colleagues predicted reduced satisfaction of the need for relatedness 1 year later. These longitudinal findings build upon previous literature by identifying TFL as a potential managerial strategy to reduce incivility in workgroups over time. They also show that mere exposure to workplace misbehavior still affects employees' adjustment, suggesting that every effort to reduce deviance in workplaces is worthwhile.

The tripartite model of intrinsic motivation in education: A 30-year retrospective and meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Intrinsic motivation is a well-established concept in psychology, yet, different types of intrinsic motivation have not been thoroughly investigated. We examined covariates associated with three types of intrinsic motivation from self-determination theory (SDT) within the education context: IM to know, IM to accomplish, and IM to experience stimulation. METHODS: A meta-analysis was conducted on samples examining the tripartite model of intrinsic motivation between 1989 and 2019. In total, 78 samples met the inclusion criteria, representing 41,633 participants across multiple nationalities. The average age of participants across samples was 19 years, and 58.2% of participants were female. Path analysis and relative weight analysis were applied to meta-analytically derived correlations. DISCUSSION: Results indicated that IM to know and IM to accomplish were moderately strong predictors of adaptive student outcomes. However, results also indicated a large degree of redundancy including indistinguishable antecedent pathways. IM to experience stimulation was positively, yet, less strongly associated with adaptive outcomes. However, it did appear to be empirically distinct from the remaining intrinsic motivation types in respect to its outcomes and antecedents. CONCLUSION: Intrinsic motivation appears to be a relatively homogeneous construct within educational psychology. Specification of different types of intrinsic motivation is likely to provide only marginal benefit.

Testing a continuum structure of self-determined motivation: A meta-analysis.

Self-determination theory proposes a multidimensional representation of motivation comprised of several factors said to fall along a continuum of relative autonomy. The current meta-analysis examined the relationships between these motivation factors in order to demonstrate how reliably they conformed to a predictable continuum-like pattern. Based on data from 486 samples representing over 205,000 participants who completed 1 of 13 validated motivation scales, the results largely supported a continuum-like structure of motivation and indicate that self-determination is central in explaining human motivation. Further examination of heterogeneity indicated that while regulations were predictably ordered across domains and scales, the exact distance between subscales varied across samples in a way that was not explainable by a set of moderators. Results did not support the inclusion of integrated regulation or the 3 subscales of intrinsic motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation to know, to experience stimulation, and to achieve) due to excessively high interfactor correlations and overlapping confidence intervals. Recommendations for scale refinements and the scoring of motivation are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record

Parental autonomy support and honesty: the mediating role of identification with the honesty value and perceived costs and benefits of honesty.

Previous research emphasizes the importance of honesty (or the absence of lying) in adolescent-parent communication as it is ultimately linked to adolescent non-delinquency (Engels, Finkenauer, & van Kooten, 2006). Empirical evidence also suggests that positive parental practices may prevent adolescents' lying (Darling, Cumsille, Caldwell, & Dowdy, 2006; Jensen, Arnett, Feldman, & Cauffman, 2004). This study tests an integrated model where perceived parental autonomy support and controlling parenting are expected to have opposite effects on adolescent's honesty in the parent-adolescent relationship via differential identification to the honesty value and perceived costs/benefits of being honest. Using structural equation modeling, results from 167 parent-adolescent dyads showed that autonomy support was associated with adolescents' identification to the honesty value and perceived low costs/high benefits of honesty. Opposite relations were observed with controlling parenting. Higher honesty value identification and low costs/high benefits of honesty in turn predicted adolescents' honesty. The importance of autonomy-supportive parenting in creating honest family settings is discussed.

Passion: Does one scale fit all? Construct validity of two-factor passion scale and psychometric invariance over different activities and languages.

The passion scale, based on the dualistic model of passion, measures 2 distinct types of passion: Harmonious and obsessive passions are predictive of adaptive and less adaptive outcomes, respectively. In a substantive-methodological synergy, we evaluate the construct validity (factor structure, reliability, convergent and discriminant validity) of Passion Scale responses (N = 3,571). The exploratory structural equation model fit to the data was substantially better than the confirmatory factor analysis solution, and resulted in better differentiated (less correlated) factors. Results from a 13-model taxonomy of measurement invariance supported complete invariance (factor loadings, factor correlations, item uniquenesses, item intercepts, and latent means) over language (French vs. English; the instrument was originally devised in French, then translated into English) and gender. Strong measurement partial invariance over 5 passion activity groups (leisure, sport, social, work, education) indicates that the same set of items is appropriate for assessing passion across a wide variety of activities--a previously untested, implicit assumption that greatly enhances practical utility. Support was found for the convergent and discriminant validity of the harmonious and obsessive passion scales, based on a set of validity correlates: life satisfaction, rumination, conflict, time investment, activity liking and valuation, and perceiving the activity as a passion.

Self-determination: a buffer against suicide ideation.

Self-determination was examined as a protective factor against the detrimental impact of negative life events on suicide ideation in adolescents. It is postulated that for highly self-determined adolescents, negative life events have a weaker impact on both hopelessness and suicide ideation than for non-self-determined adolescents. In turn, hopelessness is hypothesized to generate less suicide ideation for highly self-determined individuals. Results from multigroup analyses confirm that both the direct and indirect links between negative life events and suicide ideation were significantly weaker among participants high in self-determination. The protective role of self-determination against negative life events is discussed.