Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction in Leisure Activities and Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction

Perceived life satisfaction, referred to as the global, cognitive judgments of one’s life (Pavot et al. 1991), is considered to be an important indicator of positive psychological well-being (Huebner et al. 2005). According to self-determination theory there are some basic needs that must be satisfied in order to promote psychological well-being and secure healthy development (Deci and Ryan 2000). These are the psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy, which are postulated to be universal across people and cultures and important in all domains and aspects of a person’s life (Deci and Ryan 1985; Ryan and Deci 2000). Participation in leisure activities among adolescents constitutes one such domain where basic psychological needs may be satisfied.

The need for competence involves feeling effective in interacting with the environment, experiencing opportunities to use one’s capacities, and managing tasks that are challenging (Deci and Ryan 1985; Ryan and Deci 2000; White 1959). During leisure time activities, young people have opportunities to be good at and/or feel good about something, be challenged, and develop their skills. When the need for competence is satisfied, individuals may gain psychological rewards, and feel that they can act effectively and bring about goals. The need for competence is related closely to the need for relatedness, because feedback from significant others may be an important contributor to adolescents’ feelings of competence (Fredricks et al. 2002). Relatedness refers to the feeling of being connected to others, which includes relating to and caring for others, feeling cared for by those others, and feeling involved with the social world more generally (Baumeister and Leary 1995). Because adolescence is a period of transition, with declining conformity to parents, social relationships with peers and other adults may become increasingly important, both for general psychological well-being and for enjoyment of activities. Involvement in leisure activities links an adolescent to a set of similar peers, provides shared experiences and goals, and can reinforce friendships between peers and relationships with adults (Eccles et al. 2003). Consequently, leisure activities may facilitate adolescents’ developmental needs for social relatedness, and can contribute to one’s identity as an important and valued member of a group or community. In such activities adolescents have opportunities to be with other people, cooperate with them, and feel respected and liked.

The need for autonomy refers to people’s strivings to feel that one’s activities are self-chosen and concordant with intrinsic interests, and to have a voice or input in determining one’s own behavior (Deci and Ryan 1985). For adolescents, participation in leisure activities is most likely voluntary, self-initiated and based on their own choices and interests. Although social–cultural values and opportunities may influence participation, leisure is likely to be a context for varying degrees of self-determined and autonomous behavior. In leisure environments that support adolescents’ need for autonomy, young people may have opportunities to be involved in decision making, for example to choose their own musical pieces or types of music, influence the strategy of a team, and/or suggest positions in a sporting game. Activity leaders are important in facilitating opportunities for autonomy satisfaction, in part through the extent to which they involve participants in decisions.

Participation in leisure activities may provide adolescents with unique developmental opportunities for socialization and learning. In addition, participation in leisure activities has been linked in several studies with well-being and good mental health (e.g. Casey et al. 2005; Fletcher et al. 2003; Larson 2000), and may be associated more specifically with satisfaction of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The satisfaction of these three psychological needs in leisure activities potentially may depend on the extent of adolescents’ involvement in the activities. Earlier studies have found that factors such as breadth and intensity of participation in activities were both associated with positive developmental outcomes, such as academic adjustment, psychological competencies, and positive peer context (for an overview see Bohnert et al. 2010). The assumed mechanism is that increased participation provides youth with a wider range of activities related to growth experiences, increased levels of socialization experiences, and larger support networks. Similar mechanisms also have been proposed through activity theory (Brajsa-Zganec et al. 2011; Lemon et al. 1972; Rodriguez et al. 2008). In addition, the link between the amount of participation in leisure activities and the level of positive experiences has been supported in previous studies of adolescents (Hansen and Larson 2007; Marsh and Kleitman 2002).

According to Eccles et al. (1993), and to the stage-environment fit perspective, there is a change in developmental needs during adolescence and a mismatch may arise between the needs of developing adolescents and the opportunities afforded by their social environments. In the self-determination theory (SDT) tradition, the focus of research has not been centered on adolescents in particular. Therefore, further research on their experiences of psychological need satisfaction within important domains of adolescent life is warranted. Several previous studies have addressed psychological need satisfaction in children and adolescents by focusing on specific settings, such as the school and the family environment. Veronneau et al. (2005) examined the unique contribution of the three psychological needs and concurrent and future levels of well-being in a sample of 331 students in the third and seventh grades. These authors found that, in the domains of school and family, all three needs were associated with well-being and that the psychological need for competence seemed to be particularly important. No positive associations were found between need satisfaction with friends and well-being, which may be due to the somewhat younger ages of the participants, as peers become increasingly important during adolescence. In a recent study by Milyavskaya et al. (2009), the authors investigated an older group (mean age, 14.5 years) of 720 adolescents from the US, Canada, and France. They found that need satisfaction experienced with friends, at home, at school, and in part-time jobs was positively related to well-being, which was evident across the three countries. These findings also were replicated in a sample of Chinese adolescents within the same study. Furthermore, Sheldon et al. (2009) also tested the universality of psychological needs regarding autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the school setting in samples of 363 Nigerian students (mean age, 14.2 years) and 926 Indian students (mean age, 14.4 years). The authors found that satisfaction of all three needs in the classroom was equally important to general life satisfaction. These previous studies in the home, school and peer setting indicate the importance of testing whether the same mechanisms of psychological need satisfaction for competence, relatedness, and autonomy may explain the observed positive relationship between adolescents’ participation in leisure activities and their life satisfaction.

Data used in this study were collected in December 2005 through Norwegian participation in the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, a World Health Organization (WHO) collaborative cross-national survey. For the analysis, we used a representative sample of 3,273 Norwegian students aged 15 (N = 1,537) and 16 years (N = 1,736), with approximately equal numbers of boys and girls (51.8 % boys). Participants were selected using a stratified systematic sampling procedure, thus providing a nationally representative sample (Roberts et al. 2009). The sampling unit was the school class (15-year-old children attended the last year of compulsory lower secondary school, and 16-year-old children attended the first year of upper secondary school), with one participating class per age group. Of the 286 invited schools, 70 % chose to participate in the study and of these the student response rate was 83 %. When taking into account the nonparticipating schools, there was a response rate of 58 % at the student level.

Data were collected in accordance with a standardized protocol in the HBSC (Roberts et al. 2009). Prior to the survey, school principals gave informed consent, while passive consent was obtained from parents, who were able to withdraw their child(ren) from the study. Students were informed that participation was voluntary and their responses would be anonymous. Instructions were given to teachers on how to administer the survey. Questionnaires were given to the participating students in the selected classes and were filled out during an ordinary school period (45 min). Each student put the completed questionnaire in a sealed envelope before handing it in. All data were treated anonymously. Data collection procedures were supervised by Regional Committees for Medical Research Ethics and approved by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services Privacy Ombudsman for Research.

For the initial descriptive analyses, and Pearson correlations, IBM SPSS version 19.0 (SPSS Inc., Armonk, NY) was used. Next, confirmatory factor analysis using AMOS program 18.0 (Arbuckle 2009) was performed to examine the factor structure of the three-factor measure of perceived need satisfaction for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS was further used to examine the interrelationships between the study variables and to test the mediation hypothesis. The SEM analysis was predominantly confirmatory, because the theoretical rationale was regarded quite important, and the goal was to provide a quantitative evaluation of the hypothesized theoretical model (cf. Kline 2005). Life satisfaction and satisfaction with competence, relatedness, and autonomy were treated as latent continuous variables, while participation in activities and family affluence were observed variables in the model. To test the hypothesized model, the measurement model and the structural model were tested. The covariance matrix of the hypothesized model was analyzed using maximum likelihood estimation. Because Chi-square is highly sensitive to sample size, the global model fit was estimated by a comparative fit index (CFI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (Browne and Cudeck 1993; Byrne 2001). Recommended cut-off criteria for the two fit indices are CFI greater than .95, and RMSEA equal to or below .05 (indicating good model fit) (Hu and Bentler 1999). The structural model also was tested through a multigroup analysis (Byrne 2001, 2004), to test whether the model varied between sexes. Sobel test was used to assess whether the study variables of competence, relatedness, and autonomy satisfaction were significant mediators in the association between participation in activities and life satisfaction (Preacher and Leonardelli 2011; Sobel 1982).

Table 1 show that there was no non-normality in the data. Univariate skewness of 2.0 and higher and kurtosis of 7.0 and higher is considered moderate to high nonnormality and has been found to create problems in analyses (Curran et al. 1996; Muthen and Kaplan 1985, 1992). All variables in the present study had values well below these levels. When comparing the levels of the three needs, the reported mean level of autonomy satisfaction was significantly higher than the reported competence satisfaction (Cohen’s d = .54) and relatedness satisfaction (Cohen’s d = .19).

To determine whether there were significant sex differences in the means of the study variables, we conducted independent samples t tests for equality of means. Boys reported higher levels of life satisfaction (Cohen’s d = .41), competence satisfaction (Cohen’s d = .13), and participation in leisure activities (Cohen’s d = .18) (Table 2). There were no statistically significant sex differences in relatedness and autonomy satisfaction.

Correlation analyses of all study variables, presented in Table 3, show that the relationships between life satisfaction and the predictor variables were all positive and significant at the p < .001 level. Of the three psychological needs, satisfaction of competence need in leisure activities had the strongest correlation with life satisfaction (r = .33).

The findings of the present study showed that the experiences of need satisfaction of boys and girls were generally high for all three needs. This is a positive result, but this result may also be due to the targeted age of the participants. From early years, children undertake different kinds of leisure activities; however, by the age of 15 and 16, most individuals have probably finished testing new activities and may seek, to a stronger degree, participation in activities that they know will satisfy their needs, thereby choosing activities according to interest and talent.

The present study investigated the positive impact of participation across a range of activities. The variable was constructed in such a way that increased levels of participation also meant participation in more activities. Although not strictly measured as intensity or breadth of activities, according to Bohnert et al. (2010) the measure used in the current study still may be considered a combination of both. The results then imply that the more often adolescents participate, and the more activities they participate in, the higher their experience of need satisfaction and the higher their life satisfaction. In the current model, participation in activities and need satisfaction explained 18 % of the variance for life satisfaction. Such a finding makes conceptual sense because the leisure context represents only one of the important domains in the lives and well-being of adolescents. Additionally, life satisfaction was assessed at the global level whereas basic need satisfaction and participation in activities were measured at the contextual level (see, for example, Vallerand 1997; Vallerand and Ratelle 2002).

High levels of participation in leisure activities may not have exclusively positive effects on individual well-being, but also may have negative effects. In a sample of adults, Stenseng et al. (2011) found that obsessive passion for a leisure activity was correlated negatively with basic need satisfaction and correlated positively with negative affective outcomes of activity engagement. The overscheduling hypothesis assumes that children and adolescents are overburdened with activities and this supposedly threatens their well-being (Mahoney et al. 2008). However, studies mostly have failed to support this theory (see Bohnert et al. 2010). Based on studies investigating participation by children and young people in various organized activities, Mahoney et al. (2008) concluded that approximately 60 % participate in such activities, and that fewer than one in 10 could be considered overscheduled. This suggests that the threshold level is very high, and that increased levels of participation generally and usually have a positive, linear effect on well-being. The focus of attention, therefore, should be on promoting participation among those who do not participate, rather than on the very few who are overscheduled.

The present study is based on cross-sectional data, which measure all correlations at one point in time only and do not permit claims of causality. Based on the model tested in this study and findings from previous empirical work, it is likely that participation in activities and need satisfaction affect life satisfaction, rather than the reverse. Longitudinal studies allow predictions to be made about the causes and effects of participation in leisure activities and possible positive effects. Such research designs also may provide opportunities to control for factors that may confound relationships. However, the demonstration of significant relationships between participation, need satisfaction, and life satisfaction across sexes, when controlling for socioeconomic status, may strengthen the assumptions that there are indeed elements in participation, possibly beyond such socioeconomic and individual factors, that may increase adolescents’ life satisfaction. The rather large sample size may have influenced model fit indexes and the significance of weak relationships. Therefore, caution is needed in the interpretation of the results.

The current study was based on self-reports and so the experiences of autonomy satisfaction, for instance, do not necessarily reflect actual satisfaction of autonomy in the leisure setting. Results of the present study, therefore, should be treated with caution. In previous studies, the measurement of autonomy also has been reported as difficult, especially tapping into the “true” content of autonomy in line with how it is defined in self-determination theory. The reliability of the autonomy subscale was relatively low in the present study. Thus, the autonomy measure used in the present study may not have been ideal for the leisure setting and the adolescence age group. However, low alpha values for autonomy also have been found in previous studies (Deci et al. 2001). Additionally, the confirmatory factor analysis performed in the present study indicated an acceptable fit for the three-factor measure of perceived need satisfaction (competence, relatedness, and autonomy), with adequate factor loadings (Brown 2006). We may therefore assume that the need satisfaction measures used in the analysis most likely represent the adolescents’ experiences of satisfaction for autonomy, competence and relatedness within leisure activities. Previous research has shown that the experiences within participation in activities may differ between activities (Hansen et al. 2010; Larson et al. 2006; Tinsley and Eldredge 1995), and some activities even may thwart needs instead of satisfying them (Vallerand and Ratelle 2002). It is, therefore, likely that not all activities in the present study provided equal opportunities for individuals’ need satisfaction. The aggregated measure of participation in leisure activities used in the study comprises many different activities. Participation in several activities potentially may compensate for reduced satisfaction of some needs in certain activities. The results give a broad picture of how participation in activities, need satisfaction within such activities, and adolescents’ life satisfaction are related, which was the main aim of the current study. The assumptions about these mechanisms also are strengthened by the fact that the study employs a nationally representative sample. Thus, one may assume that the findings provide a plausible picture of adolescents’ participation in leisure time activities in Norway and of their positive leisure experiences and levels of well-being.