| SDT-package {SDT} | R Documentation |
Self-Determination Theory Measures: The R Package SDT
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 <ali.uenlue@icloud.com>
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.