The Adolescent Empowerment Measure-Freedom of Movement is a 5-item scale designed to assess and compare the ability for young adolescents (10-14 years old) to travel and attend various activities independently. This measure was developed using data from the Global Early Adolescent Study (GEAS), a multi-context questionnaire designed to assess the ability for young people to expand their goals and aspirations in order to gain greater autonomy and achieve their goals.
Geographies Tested: Belgium,Bolivia,Burkina Faso,China,Democratic Republic of the Congo,Ecuador,Egypt,India,Indonesia,Kenya,Malawi,Nigeria,United Kingdom,United States of America,Vietnam
Populations Included: Female, Male
Age Range: Adolescents
Can you tell me how often you are allowed to do the following alone?
1. Go to after school activities (like sports clubs)
2. Go to a party with boys and girls
3. Meet with friends after school
4. Go to a community center/movies/youth center
5. Visit a friend of the opposite sex
Response Options:
Never/rarely - 0
Sometimes - 1
Often - 2
Don't know - 999
Refuse - 996
Mean scores were calculated based on each set of scaled items, which ranged from 1 to 4. Scale-based mean scores were calculated, across scaled items, as the average of summed scores of items, which individually was weighted by its corresponding factor loading.
Zimmerman, L. A., Li, M., Moreau, C., Wilopo, S., & Blum, R. (2019). Measuring agency as a dimension of empowerment among young adolescents globally; findings from the Global Early Adolescent Study. SSM-population health, 8, 100454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100454
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Evidence-based Measures of Empowerment for Research on Gender Equality (EMERGE)
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