How the database is built
Coverage by module and life context
The database is organised into data modules, each representing a systematic review with its own scope and methodology. The grid below shows the current state of each module across the main topics and life contexts in the literature. Cells indicate the year of most recent search. The "comprehensive" designation refers to the completeness of covariate data extraction. Empty rows are planned additions.
Education | Workplace | Sport | PE | Health | Parenting | Exercise | Tech & gaming | General life | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic psychological needsComprehensive | 2024 | 2024 | 2024 | 2024 | 2024 | 2024 | 2024 | 2024 | 2024 |
| Need support & thwartingIntegrated | 2024 | 2022 | 2022 | 2024 | 2022 | 2022 | 2022 | — | 2022 |
| Motivation regulationIntegrated | 2019 | 2020 | — | 2019 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Aspirations & goal contentsIntegrated | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 2022 |
| Passion (harmonious & obsessive)Integrated | 2014 | 2014 | 2014 | — | — | — | 2014 | 2014 | 2014 |
| Causality orientationsPlanned | |||||||||
| InterventionsPlanned |
Basic psychological needs
The BPN module is a comprehensive systematic review of basic psychological needs research — autonomy, competence, and relatedness, measured as both satisfaction and frustration — across countries, life domains, and three decades of published research.
Constructs covered
The experience of acting with a sense of volition, choice, and self-endorsement.
Feeling effective and capable of producing desired outcomes in one's environment.
Feeling connected to others — caring for and being cared for.
Search strategy
Inclusion criterion: constructs are measured according to the self-determination theory framework. Studies from any country, life domain, or research field are considered. Studies without the necessary statistics (means, SDs, scale ranges, or correlations) are excluded.
Extraction
~30% of studies were extracted manually; the remainder was extracted using an AI-assisted pipeline (Mehr et al., 2026), with overlap used to validate accuracy. The AI extraction performed favourably on quality checks and was used for the final dataset.
Preregistration
The preregistration for the BPN module's mean-levels analysis is hosted on OSF.
Need support & thwarting
The need support module contains effects on need-supportive and need-thwarting behaviours — autonomy support, competence support, relatedness support, and their thwarting counterparts — integrated from several self-determination theory meta-analyses. Coverage now spans education and physical education (students), workplaces, sport, exercise, health, parenting and general life. Most of these searches are recent, but they were run as separate reviews; a single unified systematic search is on the roadmap to bring every context to a common date.
- →Howard, J. L., Wang, X., & Slemp, G. R. (in review). Need support and need thwarting in student populations — education and physical education; searched January–February 2024.
- →Slemp, G. R., et al. (in press, 2024). Interpersonal need support across life contexts — workplace, sport, health, exercise, parenting, general life (latest included study 2022).
- →Mossman, L. H., Slemp, G. R., Lewis, K. J., Colla, R. H., & O’Halloran, P. (2022). Autonomy support in sport and exercise settings — searched October 2020. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology.
- →Slemp, G. R., Kern, M. L., Patrick, K. J., & Ryan, R. M. (2018). Leader autonomy support in the workplace — original search October 2016; integrated here as a living, updated extract (studies to 2021). Motivation and Emotion.
Motivation regulation
The motivation regulation module contains effects on the continuum of motivation types defined by self-determination theory — intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, introjected regulation, external regulation, and amotivation — integrated from prior published meta-analyses. Coverage is strongest in education, physical education and workplaces; a fresh systematic search is on the expansion roadmap.
- →Howard, J. L., Bureau, J. S., Guay, F., Chong, J. X. Y., & Ryan, R. M. (2021). Student motivation and associated outcomes — education, physical education (no search date reported; latest included study 2019). Perspectives on Psychological Science.
- →Howard, J. L., Chong, J. X. Y., & Bureau, J. S. (2020). The tripartite model of intrinsic motivation in education — coverage to 2019. Journal of Personality.
- →Bureau, J. S., Howard, J. L., Chong, J. X. Y., & Guay, F. (2022). Antecedents of autonomous and controlled student motivation — education (no search date reported; latest included study 2019). Review of Educational Research.
- →Van den Broeck, A., Howard, J. L., et al. (2021), with its antecedents synthesis. Work motivation — workplaces; searched to October 2020. Organizational Psychology Review.
- →Slemp, G. R., Field, J. G., & Cho, A. S. H. (2020). Autonomous and controlled forms of teacher motivation — search completed March 2020. Journal of Vocational Behavior.
- →Vasconcellos, D., et al. (2020). Self-determination theory applied to physical education — searched January 2017. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Aspirations & goal contents
The aspirations module contains effects on intrinsic and extrinsic life goals (goal contents) — for example community, growth and relationships versus wealth, image and fame — and their links to wellbeing and ill-being, integrated from a published meta-analysis of the aspirations literature. The source review is domain-general, so coverage sits under general life; a context-specific search is on the roadmap.
- →Bradshaw, E. L., Conigrave, J. H., Steward, B. A., Ferber, K. A., Parker, P. D., & Ryan, R. M. (2023). A meta-analysis of the dark side of the American dream: intrinsic versus extrinsic goals and wellbeing — domain-general; searches run progressively through a final search on 8 February 2022. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Passion (harmonious & obsessive)
The passion module contains effects on harmonious and obsessive passion from the dualistic model of passion, integrated from a meta-analytic review spanning a decade of passion research across sport, work, education, leisure and gaming. It is the oldest of the integrated reviews and is maintained as a single source rather than separately updated.
- →Curran, T., Hill, A. P., Appleton, P. R., Vallerand, R. J., & Standage, M. (2015). The psychology of passion: a meta-analytical review of a decade of research on intrapersonal outcomes — multi-domain; search covered studies from 2002 to 2014. Motivation and Emotion.
Future modules
Comprehensive systematic coverage of the remaining SDT literature is the platform's expansion roadmap. Likely future modules include causality orientations and interventions, alongside unified, up-to-date systematic searches for the integrated modules above so that every construct family reaches the same recency and breadth as the basic psychological needs module. As each module is added or refreshed, this page will document its scope and methodology.