Learning Delivery Methods and Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction and Frustration: A Causal-Comparative Study

The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study was to determine if there is a difference among Instructor-led Training, Virtual Instructor-led Training, and Instructor-led Training with Autonomous Learning participants’ scores in autonomy satisfaction, autonomy frustration, relatedness satisfaction, relatedness frustration, competence satisfaction, and competence frustration. This study expounded upon the current knowledge of adult learning, including its effect on the six dimensions of basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration, and provided recommendations for future studies. A convenience sample of 123 newly hired Eastern Caribbean Business Process Outsourcing agents participating in a five-day onboard training were surveyed. Instrumentation consisted of the 24-item Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale, a self-report scale measuring the dependent variables. The researcher utilized a one-way MANOVA to analyze the relationship between the dependent variables and three groups within the independent variable for each dimension of the instrument. The original significance level of α = .05 was adjusted to α = .01 to control for Type 1 errors over 18 comparisons. Games-Howel post-hoc test was used to address the violation of homogeneity of variance. The test indicated a statistically significant difference in Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration scores between learning delivery methods resulting in a rejection of the null hypothesis at a 99% confidence level.