Adolescent Empowerment Measure – Behavioral Control and Decision Making
ADOLESCENT EMPOWERMENT MEASURE - BEHAVIORAL CONTROL AND DECISION MAKING
The Adolescent Empowerment Measure-Behavioral Control and Decision Making is a 5-item scale designed to assess and compare the ability that young adolescents (10-14 years old) feel they have to make decisions on their own about: what clothes to wear, what food to eat, what to do during free time, how much education they will have, and who they can have as friends. 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
High Psychometric Score
Short Measure
Multi-Country
ITEMS:
How often are you able to make each of the following decisions on your own without an adult?
- What clothes to wear when you are not in school/working
- What to do in your free time
- What to eat when you are not at home
- How much education you will get
- Who you can have as friends
Response Options:
Never/rarely - 0
Sometimes - 1
Often - 2
Don't know - 999
Refuse - 996
PSYCHOMETRIC SCORE
GEOGRAPHIES TESTED:
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
Scoring Procedures:
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.
PRIMARY CITATION:
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
Pyschometric Score:
Qualitative Research
Existing Literature/Theoretical Framework
Field Expert Input
Cognitive Interviews / Pilot Testing
Internal
Test-retest
Interrater
Content
Face
Criterion (gold-standard)
Construct
Psychometric Scoring
Total Score: 6.00/8 Points (HIGH)
Citation Frequency
KEY
FULL POINTS
PARTIAL POINTS NOT ASSESSED NOT APPLICABLEFor more details, see Scoring Methodology
