An instrument to assess adults' orientations toward control versus autonomy with children: Reflections on intrinsic motivation and perceived competence

Developed a 32-item, paper-and-pencil measure with 4 subscales combined to provide an overall orientation. It is shown that the responses from 68 teachers had a good range and were internally consistent and temporally stable. Further, the measure was found to be externally valid in that teachers of Grades 4-6 who were more autonomy oriented on the measure were rated as such by their students. The children of the autonomy-oriented teachers were more intrinsically motivated and had higher self-esteem than children of more control-oriented teachers. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).