Adolescent Agency in Collectivist Cultures: Development and Validation of Personal Agency in Adolescence Scale (PAAS) among Indian School Students

Adolescents exercise personal agency as they plan their life, set goals, make decisions, and perform various actions that define their life course. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a scale measuring the personal agency of adolescents in a collectivist culture, namely, India. Moreover, we integrated key concepts from the existing literature and considered the sociocultural experiences. The newly constructed scale’s psychometric properties were tested on two samples of adolescents aged between 14 and 17 from rural and urban areas. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) conducted on sample 1 (N = 571) demonstrated that the proposed six-factor model of the Personal Agency in Adolescence Scale (PAAS) was relevant to measure adolescent personal agency. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) performed on sample 2 (N = 499) showed that the six-factor model had good construct validity and that the 23-item scale could adequately measure the construct. The results also supported the internal consistency and reliability of the scale. Further, the scale’s concurrent validity with other agency scales was established. Bivariate analysis showed moderate and positive correlations with other related scales. PAAS was also moderately correlated with adolescents’ self-esteem and psychological well-being. The findings show that PAAS is a valid and reliable scale that can be employed to assess adolescents’ agency. This tool can be used by those in education, counselling, and research to measure the adolescents’ exercise of personal agency and its relations to other psychological constructs.