From this comprehensive analysis of the literature arises an absence of any singular agree-ment on how agency should be understood, observed, and measured. The lack of a clear and distinctive definition and a shared tool for its evaluation reflects the urgent need to work towards a more critical and comprehensive understanding of the construct.
This work provides a description and exploration of the instruments currently avail-able for assessing agency in adult and younger populations across several countries. We see how differences and methodological issues in selecting indicators of agency relate to the decision to measure aspects that are more intrinsic or instrumental, more context-spe-cific or more universal, individual or collective. Indeed, some studies attempted to iden-tify indicators that can be compared across contexts or over time, while others questioned whether comparable indicators can be made transposable across international socio-cul-tural or political environments (Richardson 2018; Veronese et al., 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b; Williams & Merten, 2014; Zimmerman et al., 2019). Similarly, some of the studies reviewed went on to develop instruments to assess agency in a multidimensional manner, while others focused on developing more exhaustive instruments that are both context- and dimension-specific.
Despite the variety of instruments summarized in this work, it is possible to capture some shared directions and indications regarding the development of new research in this field and the implications for clinical practice.
First, the core component of agency concerns how people can activate the resources that exist in their social and physical environment, demonstrating that any discussion of agency must take into account the broader social and cultural contexts that shape, enable, or constrain people’s ability to exercise it. Thus, there is a shared agreement on the need for a more critical understanding of the construct, which has to explore the interplay between agency and opportunity structures (Hitlin & Elder, 2006). Indeed, many of the included authors pointed out that the context within which agency is investigated is highly crucial:
access to resources, family and community dynamics, and cultural norms are all factors that influence how agency can be exercised and measured (Zimmerman et al., 2019). For instance, the freedom of movement and travel can be referred to as a standard indicator of agency. Nevertheless, in some contexts, this indicator can be tied to aspects of social and contextual norms, which, if not taken into account, can lead to misleading findings (Richardson Schimtz et al., 2019b). Hence, the direction that emerges from the studies’
reviewed concerns the need to develop empirical studies and tools with indicators directed at assessing setting-specific and cultural-specific dimensions of agency to emphasize the relevance of environmental and contextual factors (Berhane et al., 2019; Burger & Walk, 2016; Habashi & Worley, 2009; Richardson 2018; Veronese et al., 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b; Williams & Merten, 2014; Zimmerman et al., 2019).
Secondly, most authors agree on the need to investigate and measure agency in consid-eration of gender differences. Indeed, inclusive studies of both women and men that are attentive to different skills or restrictions are urgently required (Bentley-Edwards, 2016;
Black, 2016; McWhirter & McWhirter, 2016; Zimmerman et al., 2019). Similarly, in Wil-liams and Merten’s (2014) comparative study, agency emerges as a factor that promotes long-term mental health outcomes only among the sample of white men, which highlights the need to increase minority-focused investigations of the construct by exploring the rela-tionship between social advantage and agency (Hitlin & Elder, 2006; Salem et al., 2020).
Finally, there is an emerging consensus on the need to develop quantitative longitudi-nal studies (Burger & Walk, 2016; Cadenas et al., 2020; Grower & Ward, 2018; Hitlin
& Elder, 2006; Nestadt et al., 2020; Poteat et al., 2018; Veronese et al., 2019a, 2019b).
Indeed, within this review, among the 34 studies included, 74% (25 studies) were cross-sectional and the question of how indicators and factors can measure or influence agency over time was left unresolved.
To conclude, some limitations of our work should be acknowledged and discussed.
First, as widely discussed in this study, due to the lack of a clear definition of this con-struct within the literature, many terms are interchangeably used with agency (e.g., locus of control, self-efficacy). Within this review, we selected and included only those articles that specifically mentioned the term ’agency,’ which therefore excluded similar research that referred to the same construct using alternative terms. Furthermore, given the purpose of this review, we included only articles that contained a description of the instrument uti-lized to assess agency. Finally, having conducted our search in December 2020, new stud-ies meeting the inclusion criteria may have been published since then.
Despite these limitations, we believe that this work may help enhance the understand-ing of the construct of agency and its possible operationalization, which is crucial for the development of clinical interventions and policy development. For researchers, clinicians, and policy makers, we suggest that a better comprehension of the variables and indica-tors composing agency is fundamental to the development of programs that improve and protect people’s ability to make decisions and act upon them. Hence, we propose that a consensus in the academic community around the definition, application, and operation-alization of agency would improve the recognition of the influence that adults, women and
children hold within their lives, so as to inform paths to enhance it as well as to recognize the structural factors that influence and constrain it. In doing so, we emphasize scholars and policy-makers’ responsibility to act upon the paths of agency and also recognize the structural barriers to its operationalization.
Funding Open access funding provided by Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Declarations
Conflict of interest The authors have declared that they have no competing or potential conflicts of interest.
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