Development and Validation of a Brief Measure of the Three Psychological Needs Underlying Intrinsic Motivation: The Afs Scales

According to self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation arises from three psychological needs: self-determination, competence, and relatedness. In the present article, the authors describe the development of a brief, reliable, valid, and easy-to-administer measure of each of these psychological needs. (A fourth scale to measure tension is included.) Normative data, coefficient alphas, and evidence for factorial and external validity for each of the Activity-Feeling States (AFS) scales are provided. Further, predictive utility for the AFS scales is demonstrated by showing that each scale predicts both self-report and behavioral measures of intrinsic motivation.