The “Parental Conditional Regard Scales (PCRS)” are measures developed in the early 2000s by Self-Determination Theory scholars Avi Assor, Guy Roth, Richard M. Ryan, and Edward L. Deci (see Assor, Roth, & Deci 2004; Assor, Roth, Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009) to assess the impact of parental conditional regard on children. These scales measure the extent to which parents provide love and approval contingent on the child’s behavior, either in positive (conditional positive regard) or negative (conditional negative regard) terms.

Key Aspects of the PCRS

1. Parental Conditional Positive Regard (PCPR):
   • This dimension assesses the extent to which parents express more affection, warmth, and approval when the child meets their expectations or behaves in desired ways.
   • Example items: “My mother/father shows me more move when I do well in school.”
2. Parental Conditional Negative Regard (PCNR):
   • This dimension measures the degree to which parents withdraw affection, show disapproval, or become cold when the child fails to meet their expectations or engages in undesired behaviors.
   • Example Items: “My mother/father is less friendly with me when I disappoint them.”

Parental Conditional Regard Scales – Academics (PCRS-Academics)

• Focus on Academic Context:
  • The PCRS-Academics is a variant of the original scales, specifically designed to measure conditional regard in the context of academic achievement.
  • This scale captures the specific ways in which parents’ approval or disapproval is contingent upon their child’s academic performance.
• Example Items:
  • Positive: “My mother/father shows me more love when I get good grades.”
  • Negative: “My mother/father is less friendly with me when I don’t do well in school.”

Development and Validation

• Psychometric Properties:
  • The scales were developed and validated through rigorous psychometric testing, ensuring their reliability and validity across different contexts.
  • Factor analyses typically support the two-dimensional structure, confirming the distinct but related nature of positive and negative conditional regard.

Theoretical Background

• Self-Determination Theory (SDT):
  • SDT posits that human well-being and development are influenced by the fulfillment of basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
  • Conditional regard, especially negative, is hypothesized to thwart these needs, leading to negative outcomes such as internal pressure, contingent self-esteem, and emotional maladjustment.

Impact and Applications

• Child Development:
  • Research using the PCRS and PCRS-Academics has shown that high levels of parental conditional regard are associated with various negative developmental outcomes, including increased anxiety, lower self-esteem, and reduced autonomous motivation.
  • Conditional positive regard, although sometimes seen as supportive, can also have negative effects by promoting external motivation and contingent self-worth.
• Parental Guidance:
  • The findings derived from the use of PCRS inform parenting programs and interventions aimed at promoting healthier parenting practices that support children’s intrinsic motivation and psychological well-being.

The PCRS and its academic variant provide valuable insights into the dynamics of parent-child relationships, emphasizing the importance of unconditional positive regard for healthy child development and the potential drawbacks of contingent parenting strategies.

The Behavioural Regulation In Exercise Questionnaire (BREQ) and its subsequent modifications have become the most widely used measures of the continuum of behavioural regulation in exercise psychology research. The original BREQ developed by Mullan, Markland & Ingledew (1997) was developed to measure external, introjected, identified and intrinsic forms of regulation of exercise behaviour based on Deci & Ryan’s (1985, 1991) continuum conception of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, described by Organismic Integration Theory. 

Subsequently, the BREQ has been modified and advanced by the Exercise Motivation Lab at the School of Sport Health & Exercise Sciences at Bangor University. More information on the development of the BREQ as well as the various versions and scoring can be found on the Lab’s research page at: http://exercise-motivation.bangor.ac.uk/breq/breqmain.php

Note: The initial BREQ item pool included items designed to tap amotivation but these were dropped during preliminary analyses because, due to the nature of the development sample, the items exhibited very high levels of skewness. Nevertheless, the Exercise Motivation Lab at Bangor recognized that with more general samples, amotivation is an issue worth exploring. For this reason we (Markland & Tobin, 2004) reinstated the amotivation items in a second version of the instrument, called the BREQ-2. 

In common with some other measures of the behavioural regulation continuum in different contexts, the BREQ-2 does not include an integrated regulation subscale. This is because, in the initial stages of the development of the instrument, it was found to be difficult to distinguish empirically between integration and identified regulation on the one hand and intrinsic regulation on the other hand. However, Wilson, Rodgers, Loitz, and Scime (2006) added an integration subscale to the instrument which works well. And, this version has incorporated this subscale into the instrument to produce the BREQ-3. The BREQ-3 also includes a new additional introjection item. 

If you use the BREQ-3, please cite both Markland and Tobin (2004) and Wilson et al. (2006) in any subsequent papers or reports (see references below).

Scoring Information for the scale can be found at: http://exercise-motivation.bangor.ac.uk/breq/brqscore.php

A BREQ-4 version was developed by Teixeira, Rodrigues, Monteiro, & Cid (2022) for a Portuguese population. That version (with English translation too) of their BREQ-4 can be found below under Translations.  

Why Do You Do Your Work? That is the question at the heart of The Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale (WEIMS), which is an 18-item measure of work motivation grounded in SDT developed by Tremblay, M. A., Blanchard, C. M., Taylor, S., Pelletier, L. G., & Villeneuve, M. (2009). 

A questionnaire consisting of 15 items measuring perceived support for autonomy in a virtual care setting

This scale assesses the degree to which coaches utilize need supportive, need thwarting, and need indifferent behaviors when interacting with their athletes.

The questionnaire measure has been designed to tap the frustration of the three psychological needs in the sport environment. The term “thwarting” was used to name the scale because at the time it was the predominant term in the SDT literature to describe need deprivation. More recently, the term “frustration” has been more predominantly used.

This scale assess the degree to which athletes experience satisfaction or frustration of their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.