Psychological well-being, resilience, self-determination and grit: The ‘novelty’ role in physical education classes

Introduction

In recent years, the incorporation of novelty as a psychological need and the study of the frustration of needs have become a recurring theme in the research on psychological needs in the educational environment. Currently, there are two scales available to assess the frustration of basic psychological needs (FBN) in the context of Physical Education. The objectives of the study are (a) to analyse the factor structures of both scales to compare them with each other and (b) to analyse the effect of FBN on resilience, grit and each of the motivational regulations.

Method

The study included 1439 high school students (M = 15.03 years; SD = 1.24). The majority of participants were Caucasian 83.4%, African 9.7%, South American 6.1% and Asian 0.8%. The analyses used to examine the factor structure of the scales were exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis and discriminant validity analysis. Hierarchical linear regression analysis was used to analyse the relationship of FBN.

Results

Each of the scales showed greater robustness in its factor structure and reliability (2023, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 1) scale: χ²/gl = 3.62; CFI = .92; NFI = .92; RMSEA = .061; (2020, Revista de Psicología del Deporte, 29, 91) scale: χ²/gl = 2.67; CFI = .96; NFI = .96; RMSEA = .048, SRMR = .037). Additionally, FBN was positively related to less self-determined motivational regulations, while it was negatively related to grit, resilience and more self-determined motivational regulations.

Conclusion

Finally, the results highlighted that the (2020, Revista de Psicología del Deporte, 29, 91) scale, showing greater factorial robustness, obtained greater robustness in the relationships with the variables studied.