Basic psychological needs of adolescents having different in some personal characteristics and with different perceptions of social support

The purpose of the study is to examine basic psychological needs (relatedness, competence and autonomy) of adolescents, between the ages of 14 and 18, different in some personal characteristics (age, number of siblings, being a full family or a single parent family, parents' educational level, parental control) and perceiving social support from family and friends. The research is a descriptive study at the base of relational scanning model. The data of the research have been collected from 1155 students, who were chosen via convenience sampling method, between the ages of 14-18 years and from the 9th, 10th, 11th grades, attending to public and private high schools in Çekmeköy, Sancaktepe, Ümraniye and Sultanbeyli counties of İstanbul in 2012-2013 educational year. The data related to the students' perceptions of social support from family and friends were collected by "Perceived Social Support From Family, From Friends Scale", developed by Procidano and Heller (1993) and adapted Turkish by Güçray (1998), the data related to basic psychological needs were collected by "Basic Psychological Needs Scale", developed by Deci and Ryan (2000), adapted into high school students by Şahin (2007) and the data related to parental control were collected by "Parents Control" sub-scale of "Adolescent Health and Development Scale", developed by Jessor, Turbin and Costa (2004) and adapted by Siyez (2006). Data related to personal and family characteristics were collected by using "Personal Information Form" prepared by the researcher. One-way factor ANOVA, two way ANOVA and Independent Samples t Test were used to analyze data. The findings related to basic psychological needs; revealed that there was difference between the genders at the relationship need sub-dimension and showed that female adolescents' relationship need was higher than male adolescents. It was observed that competence and autonomy needs of the adolescents with high perceived social support from family and friends, was higher than adolescents with low perceived social support. When social support perceived from friends and the gender common effect were studied, it was observed that the competence needs of male adolescents with high social support perceived from friends was higher than male adolescents with low perceived social support and the autonomy needs of male adolescents with high social support perceived from friends was higher than female adolescents with high perceived social support. A significant difference in psychological needs according to some personal characteristics (age, being a full family or a single parent family, education level of father) wasn't observed. In addition to this, adolescents' competence need having many siblings is higher than the only child adolescent. It was found that adolescents' autonomy need having secondary and higher school graduate mothers is higher than adolescents having illiterate mothers. It was seen that the adolescents with more parental control have higher need for relationship than the adolescents with low parental control, but have lower need for autonomy. Keywords: Adolescence, perceived social support from family and friends, basic psychological needs