Measuring the Influence of Using Technology on Individuals' Feelings of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness

Abstract

Using technological novelties brings about both negative and positive effects on human life, and one such effect is likely to be on the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Using technology can make individuals feel more or less autonomous, competent, and related depending on their culture and the type of technology used. Measuring and understanding such influences can guide companies in developing technologies that help individuals feel more satisfied in these basic psychological needs. This is important to accomplish not only in Western but also in non-Western contexts, since psychological needs are deemed universal and technology use is global. Therefore, the present study adapted and validated the Technology Effects on Need Satisfaction in Life (TENS-Life) scale into Turkish. The scale was translated and back-translated by bilingual psychology PhDs and these translations were synthesized by the authors to create the Turkish version of the TENS-Life scale. This Turkish version and the original English version were administered to bilingual Turkish university students studying English Language Teaching. Upon establishing linguistic equivalence, the scale was administered to a different sample of university students from various majors and universities. This administration yielded a three-factor structure matching the original scale, and analyses indicated the Turkish version to be a valid and reliable measurement tool overall. Recommendations were made to improve the moderate reliability that emerged for the autonomy subscale in this Turkish sample. Technology use pervades many domains of life in T & uuml;rkiye from education to personal, from business to social. With this scale, the influence of technology on the feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness of Turkish students, teachers, businesspeople, and social media users can be measured. This way, developers can detect and mitigate the negative effects of technology on the basic psychological needs of Turkish individuals by customizing their products for this culture. In sum, this adapted scale can inform the design of the most satisfactory user interfaces and technologies that optimize user well-being in T & uuml;rkiye and also enable cross-cultural comparisons of the effects of technology on need satisfaction across the world.