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Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

Abstract

The satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, as defined in self- determination theory, plays a crucial role in adolescents’ healthy development. It seems important to assess their satisfaction of all three needs. However, few existing valid and reliable measures especially assess need satisfaction in this age group. Besides, in Vietnam, very little is known about self-determination theory’s basic needs. Therefore, this present study aims to validate the youth report version of the basic need satisfaction and frustration scale (BPNSFS) in the Vietnamese context to pave the way for future research in this field. A total of 680 Vietnamese adolescents completed the Vietnamese youth version of the BPNSFS, along with the Perceived Stress Scale, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, and Satisfaction with Life Scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to examine the factor structure of the measure; multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the predictive validity of the measure; and finally, MANOVA was used to examine the differences in the need satisfaction and frustration among sociodemographic variables. The findings showed that a six-factor solution best fitted the data of Vietnamese adolescents; the dimensions of need satisfaction and need frustration meaningfully predicted adolescents’ well-being outcomes; and need satisfaction and need frustration did not vary, along with the sociodemographic characteristics. In general, the Vietnamese version of BPNSFS appears to be a reliable and valid measure of the satisfaction and frustration of basic psychological needs in Vietnamese adolescents. The limitations and implications of the results are also discussed.

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