Rethinking students' psychological need states: The unique role of need unfulfilment to understanding ill-being in academic settings.

Abstract

Prior research has shown that students face various stressors which can affect their psychological health. The present study examines the role of students' psychological need states in explaining their burnout and dropout intentions. More precisely, relying on recent findings from Self-Determination Theory research, we examined whether students' psychological need unfulfilment could contribute to explain their ill-being over and above need satisfaction and frustration. To this end, we also tested the validity of a tripartite instrument allowing to assess these need states in academic settings (Psychological Need States in Education-Scale [PNSE-S]). A study was conducted among two samples of high school (N=473; Sample 1) and college (N=1143; Sample 2) students. Results supported the construct validity of the 35-item PNSE-S in both samples by showing that students' relatedness, autonomy, and competence unfulfilment can be modelled as distinct need states alongside the frustration and satisfaction of those three needs. Moreover, these different need states displayed a well-differentiated pattern of associations with various facets of student burnout and with dropout intentions. Results also showed the critical role of psychological need unfulfilment in explaining students' ill-being.