Construct validity of Williams' ostracism needs threat scale

Much recent work on ostracism has used the online game Cyberball paired with an un-validated 12-item scale that purportedly measures four needs. Thus, the present paper examined convergent and discriminant validity for the needs threat scale compared to the Sheldon Needs Scale, a more established measure of ten psychological needs. Two samples, containing 192 participants, completed inclusion or exclusion manipulations via Cyberball. Convergent validity correlations were higher than divergent correlations, but within-scale correlations were higher still, suggesting the sub-scales are not perfectly distinct. This was further supported by the poor fit to a four-factor model in confirmatory factor analysis and the existence of a two-factor structure in exploratory factor analysis.