Multilevel Modeling of Motivation: A Self-Determination Theory Analysis of Basic Psychological Needs

Motivation is, by its very nature, a dynamic process. Human motives and desires fluctuate in direction and strength according to inner promptings and environmental contingencies that can facilitate or inhibit the satisfaction of needs, and desires also vary as individuals negotiate their day-to-day lives. This dynamic character of motivation has implications for research designs and analytic approaches used to investigate it. Because traditional one-occasion, experimental, and longitudinal approaches typically provide very limited opportunities to model the dynamic variability of motivation, researchers have begun to pair nontraditional methods such as experience sampling with analytic tools such as multilevel modeling to extend our understanding of motivation as it operates in day-to-day contexts. In this chapter, we discuss recent research using multilevel approaches to modeling the variable nature of motivation and its consequences. Specifically, we focus on recent efforts to understand the expression of three basic psychological needs specified by self-determination theory (SOT; Oeci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan, 1995).