Autonomy support among students, perceived stress and fear of negative evaluation: The relationship with satisfaction with life

The aim of this work was to design and validate the Scale of Support for student autonomy, and determine the predictive power of the variables support student autonomy, fear of negative evaluation and perceived stress on satisfaction with life. The sample consisted of 332 college students (male and female) in second year of several Degrees of Health Sciences. The Support for student autonomy scale presented adequate psychometric properties through a CFA and internal consistency. The linear regression analysis indicated that the style support for autonomy predicted positively life satisfaction of students in higher education while fear of negative evaluation and perceived stress did so negatively. The results of this work point to the recommendation of diagnosing autonomy support among students with the aim of reducing the negative symptoms detected among this group.