SDT-package: Self-Determination Theory Measures: The R Package SDT

In SDT: Self-Determination Theory Measures

Description

Self-determination theory (SDT) is a theory of human motivation. The package SDT provides functions and an example dataset for computing measures of motivation internalization and of motivation simplex structure, and the original and adjusted self-determination or relative autonomy index in R.

Details

Package:	SDT
Type:	Package
Version:	1.0.0
Date:	2018-01-12
License:	GPL (>= 2)

SDT was proposed by Deci and Ryan (1985, 2000, 2002) and is a popular theory of motivation. This theory is useful for understanding the motivational basis of human behaviors. The general aim is to investigate the interplay between the extrinsic forces or factors acting on people (e.g., grades or payment) and the intrinsic motives or needs inherent in humans (e.g., interests or enjoyment).

Applications are numerous and are extensively referenced, with comprehensive additional materials on the theory and the available questionnaires, on the website http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org.

In particular, SDT postulated different types of motivation. As to the introjected and identified regulation of extrinsic motivation, their internalizations were described as “somewhat external” and “somewhat internal” and remained undetermined in the theory. The function internalization implements the constrained regression analysis approach by Uenlue and Dettweiler (2015) that allows these vaguely expressed intermediate motivations to be estimated from questionnaire data. The approach can also be generalized and applied for simplex structure analysis in SDT, where the simplex structure of SDT means that motivation regulation types theoretically closer to one another are more strongly interrelated/correlated. Simplex structure analysis in R is provided with the function simplex. Finally, the third main function sdi of the package SDT implements the popular self-determination or relative autonomy index (SDI or RAI), which is a scoring protocol or summary statistic aggregating individual test or subscale scores to yield an overall informative measure. As discussed in Uenlue (2016), the original SDI or RAI index is confounded (i.e., generally not accommodating biasing effects on the overall index value that may result from a mixture of internal and external motivation), therefore the function sdi also implements an adjusted scoring protocol variant of this measure.

The package SDT is implemented based on the S3 system. It comes with a namespace, and consists of three main functions: internalization, sdi, and simplex. It also contains five functions, which are plot, print, and summary methods for objects of the class sdi, and plot and print methods for objects of the class share: plot.sdi, print.sdi, and summary.sdi, and plot.share and print.share. The features of the package SDT are illustrated with an accompanying dataset: learning_motivation.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Ali Uenlue <[e-mail]>

References

Deci, E. L. and Ryan, R. M. (1985) Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York, NY: Plenum. URL https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2271-7.

Deci, E. L. and Ryan, R. M. (2000) The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. URL https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01.

Deci, E. L. and Ryan, R. M. (Eds.) (2002) Handbook of Self-Determination Research. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Uenlue, A. (2016) Adjusting potentially confounded scoring protocols for motivation aggregation in organismic integration theory: An exemplification with the relative autonomy or self-determination index. Frontiers in Educational Psychology, 7(272), 1–4. URL https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00272.

Uenlue, A. and Dettweiler, U. (2015) Motivation internalization and simplex structure in self-determination theory. Psychological Reports, 117(3), 675–691. URL https://doi.org/10.2466/14.PR0.117c25z1.

SDT documentation built on May 2, 2019, 6:08 a.m.