Measuring Agency as a Dimension of Empowerment Among Young Adolescents Globally; Findings from the Global Early Adolescent Study
The limited evidence of successful strategies to improve young adolescents’ autonomy in making informed choices, coupled with the global priority of enhancing empowerment, suggests the need to improve our understanding of empowerment in this age group, for both girls and boys. Building on previous frameworks, the Global Early Adolescent Study (GEAS) used formative qualitative research and previous measures of empowerment to develop and validate a construct of agency, relevant to the lives of early adolescents and applicable globally. This paper summarizes the construction and validation process for three sub-scales within the construct of agency, using data from fifteen GEAS sites.