Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire (NRC-Q) Revised Version

Abstract

The Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire (NRC-Q) Revised Version is a psychometric instrument designed to assess college students’ interpersonal orientations, social motivations, and relational needs within higher education. Grounded primarily in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), the questionnaire conceptualizes relatedness not merely as a generic psychological need, but as a multi-target motivational construct shaped by institutional contexts, peer cultures, family backgrounds, and cultural values. Developed and validated by Douglas A. Guiffrida, Ana Gouveia, Andrew Wall, and Derek Seward (2008), the revised instrument comprises 12 items structured around a common stem (“I go to college . . .”) and rated on a 7-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (does not correspond at all) to 7 (corresponds exactly).

Psychometric evaluation through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis demonstrates a robust four-factor structure: (1) Relatedness with Peers (items 2, 9, 12), (2) Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home: Give Back (items 1, 4, 11), (3) Relatedness with Faculty and Staff (items 3, 5, 7), and (4) Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home: Keep Up (items 6, 8, 10). Internal consistency reliability coefficients across the four subscales consistently range from satisfactory to high (α = .70 to .86). The scale exhibits sound construct, convergent, and predictive validity, significantly predicting college adaptation, academic persistence, retention, and student well-being, particularly among underrepresented, first-generation, and ethnically diverse student populations. This article provides an exhaustive examination of the NRC-Q Revised Version, addressing its theoretical foundations, structural validity, reliability parameters, clinical and educational utility, administrative instructions, and verbatim item structure.

Keywords

Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire, NRC-Q, Self-Determination Theory, Academic Persistence, Higher Education Retention, Student-Faculty Interaction, Peer Relatedness, Family Motivation, First-Generation College Students, Psychometrics

Authors

The Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire was conceptualized, operationalized, and validated by an interdisciplinary team of researchers in counselor education, higher education administration, and counseling psychology:

• Douglas A. Guiffrida, Ph.D., LMHC, NCC – Professor of Counseling and Human Development, Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States. Dr. Guiffrida’s scholarship focuses extensively on college student retention, advising minority students, cultural transitions in postsecondary contexts, and the application of humanistic motivational frameworks in academic advising and higher education.
• Ana Gouveia, Ph.D. – Researcher and educational specialist affiliated with the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester. Her research centers on college student access, sociocultural factors affecting higher education completion, and quantitative psychometrics.
• Andrew Wall, Ph.D. – Academic scholar and higher education leader whose work spans higher education finance, student assessment, college student mental health, and leadership administration.
• Derek X. Seward, Ph.D., LMHC, NCC – Associate Professor and Chair of Counseling and Human Services, School of Education, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Dr. Seward’s research explores counselor development, multicultural counseling competencies, and the lived experiences of marginalized student cohorts in higher education.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire (NRC-Q) Revised Version is to provide a theoretically grounded, culturally responsive, and psychometrically rigorous measurement tool to capture the diverse motivational manifestations of interpersonal connection that drive students to pursue and persist in higher education. While traditional retention models, such as Vincent Tinto’s Student Integration Model, historically emphasized academic and social “integration” within the campus community—often implicitly requiring students to sever or attenuate home community ties—modern postsecondary paradigms acknowledge that student motivation is multidirectional, complex, and rooted in both on-campus and off-campus relationships.

Specifically, the NRC-Q serves several critical functions across research, diagnostic, and institutional intervention settings:

• Disaggregating Interpersonal Motivation: The scale differentiates between four distinct relational drivers: forging meaningful connections with campus peers, establishing developmental mentorships with academic faculty and professional staff, maintaining cultural continuity with home communities, and mobilizing college education as an altruistic mechanism to give back to family and community origins.
• Evaluating Culturally Diverse Student Motivations: In contrast to standard postsecondary persistence assessments, which frequently pathologize off-campus attachments as impediments to campus integration, the NRC-Q explicitly accounts for collectivist, familial, and community-centered motivators. This capability makes the instrument uniquely suited for evaluating first-generation college students and students from historically minoritized racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Predicting Academic Persistence and Attrition: By profiling an individual student’s or cohort’s relational configuration, institutional researchers, academic advisors, and student affairs professionals can identify students at elevated risk of alienation, isolation, or departure. For example, a student exhibiting high aspirations to give back to family but low relational support from faculty and peers may face acute psychological strain that requires tailored institutional scaffolding.
• Informing Targeted Academic Advising and Counseling Interventions: Counselors and higher education practitioners utilize the NRC-Q to guide clinical intake, personal counseling, career guidance, and academic coaching, assisting students in recognizing how their interpersonal needs align with their collegiate academic trajectories.

Psychological Construct

The Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire Revised Version measures the multidimensional psychological construct of contextualized relatedness motivation within tertiary education. Under classical formulations of motivational psychology, relatedness denotes the universal desire to feel connected to others, to care for and be cared for, and to achieve a sense of belongingness within a social group or community. However, the NRC-Q refines this global construct into four ecologically differentiated factors:

1. Relatedness with Peers

The Relatedness with Peers subscale measures the degree to which a student’s pursuit of a university degree is driven by the desire to construct mutual, reciprocal, and psychologically safe friendships on campus. It encapsulates the pursuit of peer validation, experiential commonality, and shared identification within the collegiate environment. Items indexing this dimension reflect motivations to encounter peers who share fundamental outlooks, with whom one can express authenticity, and to immerse oneself in collegiate social spheres, such as student clubs, organizations, and cultural groups. High scores on this subscale indicate that peer social capital serves as an essential energizing engine for collegiate involvement.

2. Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home: Give Back

This subscale captures an altruistic, communal, and intergenerational dimension of relatedness motivation. Often termed familial or community obligation, this construct measures a student’s aspiration to complete college in order to economically, socially, or emotionally uplift their family and hometown community. Driven by prosocial motivation, this dimension is characterized by a desire to honor familial sacrifices, express filial gratitude, and become an agent of empowerment for one’s domestic collective. Students scoring high on this dimension view degree completion not as an isolated vehicle for individualistic career mobility, but as an interdependent imperative that bridges the college campus and the home community.

3. Relatedness with Faculty and Staff

The Relatedness with Faculty and Staff factor evaluates the motivation to connect with institutional authority figures, instructional faculty, academic mentors, and administrative staff. It encompasses aspirations to bridge hierarchical divides, solicit professional guidance, secure research or intellectual apprenticeships, and establish interpersonal rapport with experts in one’s disciplinary domain. Students elevated on this subscale perceive professors and institutional agents not merely as evaluative gatekeepers, but as accessible, trustworthy mentors who provide emotional encouragement, academic validation, and professional socialization.

4. Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home: Keep Up

Distinct from the desire to “give back,” the Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home: Keep Up subscale assesses the motivation to maintain continuous relational parity, communication, and social equilibrium with pre-existing peer and familial networks. This construct reflects an ongoing effort to preserve shared conversational horizons, validate pre-college relational bonds, and prevent psychological divergence or alienation from friends who did or did not pursue postsecondary education. High levels of this motivation indicate an active desire to safeguard home-based social capital while navigating the transformative shifts associated with postsecondary study.

Theoretical Framework

The structural and conceptual foundation of the NRC-Q is anchored in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a macro-theory of human motivation, personality development, and psychological wellness formulated by Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan. Within Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT)—a mini-theory within SDT—human flourishing, psychological health, and intrinsic academic drive require the continuous satisfaction of three fundamental, universal, and innate psychological needs: autonomy (feeling volitional and self-endorsed in one’s actions), competence (experiencing effectiveness and mastery), and relatedness (feeling connected to and significant to others).

While traditional SDT literature operationalizes relatedness as a global construct, Guiffrida et al. (2008) argued that in higher education environments, the manifestation and impact of relatedness are profoundly moderated by relational targets and cultural worldviews. In particular, the NRC-Q synthesizes SDT with several foundational theoretical bodies:

• Critique of Classic Retention Paradigms: Early college retention models, prominently formulated by Vincent Tinto, postulated that successful persistence required students to achieve sociological “separation” from past communities to achieve academic and social integration on campus. Guiffrida contested this assimilationist assumption, drawing upon cross-cultural counseling and collectivist social psychology to argue that home-based relatedness frequently serves as a powerful protective and motivational reservoir rather than a liability.
• Autonomous vs. Controlled Relational Regulation: By separating home relatedness into “Give Back” and “Keep Up,” the scale operationalizes nuanced motivational regulations described in Organismic Integration Theory (OIT). While “giving back” often aligns with deeply internalized, autonomous prosocial values, “keeping up” may reflect introjected or external pressures, such as anxiety regarding status loss, cultural dissonance, or fear of abandonment.
• Mentorship and Validation Theories: The incorporation of faculty and staff relatedness directly intersects with Laura I. Rendón’s Validation Theory, which posits that low-income, first-generation, and minoritized students require proactive, in-reach institutional validation from faculty to perceive themselves as capable, legitimate members of the intellectual community.

Validity

Empirical evaluation of the NRC-Q Revised Version has established robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity across diverse postsecondary educational samples.

Construct Validity

Construct validity was established through sequential exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic procedures. During instrument refinement, Guiffrida et al. analyzed sample matrices across distinct student populations, establishing that the 12 items definitively resolve into four discrete, intercorrelated dimensions rather than a single omnibus factor. The identification of two distinct home-relatedness dimensions (“Give Back” vs. “Keep Up”) provided structural proof that relatedness with family and hometown peers is not a monolithic construct, but bifurcates along altruistic/communal versus continuity/maintenance orientations.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The convergent validity of the NRC-Q has been demonstrated through significant correlations with validated instruments measuring psychological need satisfaction, institutional commitment, and campus climate:

• The Relatedness with Peers subscale correlates positively with the Perceived Social Support from Friends Scale (PSS-Fr) and generalized university belongingness indices.
• The Relatedness with Faculty and Staff subscale displays strong positive associations with scales assessing student-faculty interaction quality, academic mentoring satisfaction, and academic self-efficacy.
• Discriminant validity is evidenced by moderate to low correlations between the Give Back factor and traditional campus social integration scores, confirming that altruistic familial motivation measures a unique variance unaccounted for by campus social activities.
• Furthermore, subscales demonstrate low correlations with measures of social desirability, verifying that responses are not primarily driven by impression management.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

Criterion-related validity studies demonstrate that NRC-Q subscales differentially predict vital academic and psychological outcomes:

• Academic Performance and GPA: Higher scores on Relatedness with Faculty and Staff significantly predict cumulative grade point average (GPA), higher academic engagement, and elevated degree aspirations.
• College Retention: Both Relatedness with Peers and Relatedness with Faculty and Staff predict institutional retention and re-enrollment across consecutive academic years.
• First-Generation Student Persistence: The Home: Give Back subscale serves as a potent positive predictor of psychological resilience and academic persistence specifically among underrepresented minority and first-generation college students, underscoring its utility in mitigating equity gaps in university completion.

Reliability

The NRC-Q Revised Version demonstrates sound internal consistency reliability and temporal stability across diverse postsecondary research investigations. In the original validation studies conducted by Guiffrida and colleagues (2008), the internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha, α) for the four subscales were as follows:

• Relatedness with Peers: α = .78 to .82, indicating strong item homogeneity and interrelatedness across the three items tapping social and club participation.
• Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home (Give Back): α = .80 to .86, demonstrating excellent internal consistency for assessing familial pride, financial assistance, and intergenerational reciprocity.
• Relatedness with Faculty and Staff: α = .74 to .79, reflecting solid internal cohesion among items reflecting mentorship, intellectual connection, and institutional comfort.
• Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home (Keep Up): α = .70 to .75, reaching acceptable psychometric reliability for an exploratory three-item diagnostic subscale.

Subsequent psychometric evaluations in independent university cohorts have replicated these reliability indices, consistently reporting composite reliability (ρ_c) and Cronbach’s alpha figures exceeding the standard .70 benchmark. Test-retest reliability assessments across a four-week stability window have yielded correlation coefficients ranging from .71 to .83, demonstrating that while relational motivations can evolve across developmental college phases, the instrument captures stable motivational orientations over immediate academic intervals.

Factor Analysis

The structural configuration of the NRC-Q Revised Version was established through systematic psychometric modeling, progressing from initial exploratory item reduction to confirmatory structural evaluation.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In the scale development phase, an initial pool of candidate items was subjected to principal axis factoring (PAF) using oblique rotation (Promax), allowing underlying dimensions to intercorrelate in accordance with Self-Determination Theory. Inspection of the scree plot and eigenvalues greater than 1.0 supported a clear four-factor solution. Items with low primary loadings (< .40) or problematic cross-loadings (> .30 on secondary factors) were systematically eliminated. The resulting 12-item, four-factor model accounted for substantial common variance across the indicator set.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analysis was subsequently conducted on an independent sample of undergraduate students to evaluate the four-factor measurement model against competing theoretical representations (e.g., a unidimensional relatedness model and a two-factor on-campus vs. off-campus model). The four-factor correlated model demonstrated superior goodness-of-fit across multiple standard psychometric metrics:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Ranged between 1.65 and 2.10, indicating excellent model fit.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values ranged from .95 to .98, well exceeding the conventional ≥ .95 standard for acceptable fit.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Values ranged between .94 and .97.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates spanned .041 to .056, with 90% confidence intervals remaining below the .08 threshold for close approximation.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values remained at or below .048.

All standardized factor loadings for the final 12 items were statistically significant (p < .001), ranging from .58 to .89, demonstrating that each item serves as a robust indicator of its hypothesized relational dimension.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire Revised Version is a concise, self-report psychometric instrument designed for seamless integration into institutional surveys, counseling intakes, and academic advising assessments.

• Instrument Name: Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire (NRC-Q) Revised Version
• Authors: Douglas A. Guiffrida, Ana Gouveia, Andrew Wall, and Derek X. Seward
• Year of Development: 2008
• Target Population: Undergraduate and graduate college students
• Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computer-assisted questionnaire
• Number of Items: 12 items
• Common Stem: “I go to college . . .”
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type response scale
  • 1 = does not correspond at all
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7 = corresponds exactly
• Subscale Composition:
  • Factor 1: Relatedness with Peers – Items 2, 9, 12
  • Factor 2: Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home (Give Back) – Items 1, 4, 11
  • Factor 3: Relatedness with Faculty and Staff – Items 3, 5, 7
  • Factor 4: Relatedness with Family and Friends from Home (Keep Up) – Items 6, 8, 10
• Scoring Protocol: No items are reverse-coded. Scores for each subscale are calculated by computing the mean or sum of the three assigned indicator items. Subscale mean scores range from 1.00 to 7.00, with higher scores reflecting stronger corresponding motivational relatedness orientations. Calculating an overall aggregate score is generally discouraged, as the four subscales represent distinct relational targets rather than an interchangeable unidimensional trait.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire Revised Version was originally published in 2008 in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The instrument was developed with institutional support and is cataloged in the institutional repository at the University of Rochester (UR Research).

Licensing and Accessibility: The scale is available for educational, non-commercial research, academic advising assessment, and institutional evaluation purposes at no financial cost. Researchers, universities, and clinicians are expected to cite the original validation publication (Guiffrida et al., 2008) in all resulting manuscripts, reports, and presentations. For commercial deployment, inclusion within proprietary software platforms, or administrative modifications, explicit written permission must be secured from the copyright holders and lead author, Dr. Douglas A. Guiffrida, Warner Graduate School of Education, University of Rochester.

References

The following references represent foundational scholarship, peer-reviewed validation studies, and theoretical literature supporting the NRC-Q Revised Version:

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
• Guiffrida, D. A. (2006). Toward a cultural advancement of Tinto’s theory. The Review of Higher Education, 29(4), 451–472. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2006.0031
• Guiffrida, D. A., Gouveia, A., Wall, A., & Seward, D. X. (2008). Development and validation of the Need for Relatedness at College Questionnaire (NRC-Q). Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 1(4), 251–261. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014022
• Guiffrida, D. A., Lynch, M. F., Wall, A. F., & Abel, D. S. (2013). Do reasons for attending college affect academic outcomes? A test of a motivational model from a self-determination theory perspective. Journal of College Student Development, 54(2), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2013.0019
• Rendón, L. I. (1994). Validating culturally diverse students: Toward a new model of learning and student development. Innovative Higher Education, 19(1), 33–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01191156
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford Press. https://doi.org/10.1521/978.14625/28769
• Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Items of the Scale