Self-Determination Adult Scale (SDAS)

To know yourself and your context is to know your strengths and weaknesses, needs, and preferences. Your dreams about the future reveal what is important to you. The more you know about yourself, the better able you will be to determine, from the available options, the directions you wish to pursue.

Sample Items

• I know what is important to me.

• I dream about what my life will be like in the future.

To value yourself means that you accept and appreciate yourself. This does not mean that you are necessarily satisfied with everything about yourself but rather, that you can accept and believe in yourself, knowing that, like everyone, you have strengths and weaknesses. Feeling that you have a right to make important decisions about your life is fundamental to valuing yourself. Recognizing that you have limitations and weaknesses, and that this is a human condition, allows you to recognize the way these weaknesses or limitations affect you and what knowledge or skills were developed to compensate for them. Valuing yourself forms the foundation for developing positive relationships with others, a key to self-determination.

Accepting and valuing yourself also includes the ability and motivation to care for, or access care for, yourself emotionally, mentally, and physically. Understanding your rights and responsibilities is fundamental to believing in yourself and helps you develop positive, productive relationships with others. If you have a good idea about what you are responsible for and what your rights are, you are likely to have more control, and better relationships with others, in any situation.

Sample Items

• I think about what is best for me when I do things.

• In an argument, I am responsible for how I act on my feelings.

If you have a plan, you're much more likely to achieve what you want. Planning includes establishing goals and determining steps to reach those goals. To effectively plan, you need to anticipate the possible consequences that may result from taking planned actions. This anticipation permits you to alter either the goal or the plan if the anticipated result is not what you wanted.

Making alternative plans, especially when encountering barriers, is a dynamic, creative, process. Finally, taking the time to prepare for and rehearse our planned actions—even if it's in your imagination---can improve performance and the likelihood of achieving your goals.

Sample Items

• Goals give my life direction.

• Before agreeing to participate in a new activity, I think about how it might affect my other activities.

Planning without acting on the plan will, obviously, not result in achieving your goals. To act in a manner to accomplish a goal, you need to take a risk, to put yourself on the line to either succeed or fail, and, if you don't reach your goal, you will still have learned some lessons that will help you the next time you try to achieve a goal. To lessen some of the risks, you need to develop the ability to listen to and understand others, to communicate in ways that invite others to listen non-defensively, to negotiate win-win solutions to problems, to deal in positive or appropriately humorous ways with conflict and criticism, to access resources needed to implement a plan, and to be persistent in continuing your efforts until successful or until a different creative solution is found.

Sample Items

• When I set a goal I work until I achieve it.

• If I need help at work, I can figure out where to get it.

To recognize your success or to find ways to improve your success on the next attempt, you need to evaluate both the outcome (what happened) and your performance (what you did) while working to achieve your goal. If the results were successful, celebrate! It will help you be more successful the next time if you savor and celebrate the good things that happen in your life. If the results were not what you hoped for, then appropriate adjustments need to be made for the next attempt. By reflecting on your efforts to attain goals, you can increase both your awareness about your preferences and the skills that will help you be more self-determined on your next attempt. Practicing the process of self-determination, and reflecting on the process, is one of the most effective ways to further develop your capacity to be self-determined.

Sample Items

• I think about how I could have done some things better.

• It is important for me to know what I do well in being a good friend.