Adolescent Students’ Psychological Needs and Educational Outcomes in School: A Latent Profile Analysis

Abstract

Based on self-determination theory and taking a person-centered approach, we aimed to investigate latent profiles regarding middle school students’ satisfaction and frustration of basic psychological needs. We also compared student profiles with respect to academic functioning and personal characteristics. Results based on a sample of 838 Chinese middle school students revealed that need satisfaction and need frustration were two distinguishable constructs. Latent profile analyses further identified four profiles: slightly low all, high satisfaction/high frustration, low satisfaction/moderate frustration, and high satisfaction/low frustration. Moreover, there were significant differences in students’ academic functioning among the four latent profiles. In particular, students with high need frustration were most likely to experience maladaptive academic functioning, regardless of their need satisfaction level. These four profiles also demonstrated meaningful associations with other student characteristics. Specifically, girls were less likely to be assigned to the high satisfaction/low frustration profile than to the low satisfaction/moderate frustration profile. Students’ socioeconomic status was not related to profile membership. The findings demonstrate the importance of considering within-person patterns of both need satisfaction and need frustration in order to more fully capture the factors that affect students’ academic functioning in school.