Psychometric Properties and Measurement Invariance for a Chinese Version of a Psychological Need Thwarting Scale for Teachers

Liang Chen, Jeffrey Hugh Gamble, I-Hua Chen, Zeng-Han Lee and Qian-Lan Fu
Additional contact information
Liang Chen: School of Education, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an City 710062, China
Jeffrey Hugh Gamble: Department of Foreign Languages, National Chiayi University, Chiayi 62103, Taiwan
I-Hua Chen: College of Education Science, Minnan Normal University, Zhangzhou 363000, China
Zeng-Han Lee: College of Teacher Education, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou City 325035, China
Qian-Lan Fu: Qionglai Nanjie Primary School, Qionglai City 611500, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 9, 1-18

Abstract: While teachers’ psychological needs have been evaluated in terms of need satisfaction, need thwarting of teachers is under-researched. This study developed a Chinese version of a Psychological Need Thwarting (PNT) scale for teachers and evaluated both its psychometric properties and measurement invariance across groups. Psychometric criteria for the scale were evaluated, with satisfactory levels of internal reliability, test–retest reliability, convergent and divergent validities, and model goodness-of-fit. One item translated from the original PNT scale was removed due to cross-loading. Criterion validity was established, with R 2 = 0.54 for the factor of burnout (emotional exhaustion). Measurement invariance was established using confirmatory factor analysis for the factors of gender, grade of instruction, and position. The teachers evaluated demonstrated higher levels of competence thwarting, as compared to autonomy and relatedness thwarting, but overall higher levels of thwarting as compared to previous research. Males reported higher levels of autonomy and competence thwarting as compared to females and secondary school teachers reported higher levels of relatedness thwarting as compared to primary school teachers. The developed scale can serve as a valuable tool in evaluating the thwarting of teachers’ psychological needs, an issue which can profoundly impact teachers’ and students’ mental health and performance.

Keywords: psychological need thwarting; burnout; emotional exhaustion; psychometrics; Chinese basic education; measurement invariance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/9/3247/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/9/3247/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:9:p:3247-:d:354712

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().