Constructing General Human Agency Indicators (GHAIs) and a General Personal Agency Scale (GPAS)

Abstract Despite its importance for the social sciences, human agency remains an ambiguous and underoperationalized construct. After engaging prior research to articulate clear criteria for defining agency and synthesize a multidimensional conceptual framework for human agency, this study develops and validates preliminary General Human Agency Indicators (GHAIs) to measure subconstructs within that framework. Utilizing the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) dataset, we aggregated a list of 30 survey items previously used in agency research and conducted an iterative process of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and item elimination to reduce that list to a set of 9–13 items with a strong, consistent factorial structure. Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we identified two bifactor models that demonstrated good fit: a nine-item General Personal Agency scale (GPAS) and a nine-item GHAIs tool combining six items from the GPAS with three measuring agency achievement. Initial evidence for the construct validity of the tools was produced through tests of internal consistency and correlational analysis, indicating that the proposed GPAS and GHAIs effectively measure personal agency, intrinsic agency, instrumental agency, and agency achievement.