Abstract

MAYTORENA NORIEGA, María de los Ángeles  and  GONZALEZ LOMELI, Daniel. Personal Agency Scale in Higher Education: Design and Validation. Psicumex [online]. 2020, vol.10, n.1, pp.39-60.  Epub Dec 09, 2020. ISSN 2007-5936.  https://doi.org/10.36793/psicumex.v10i1.338.

The concept of human agency has been used since ancient times from a philosophical perspective and gradually was incorporated into social disciplines. Current research and specialized literature show varied and different ways of measuring it through diverse constructs. Given this conceptual diversity of agency, the aim of this study was to develop and test a scale of personal agency for the educational field, based on Bandura’s (2002, 2006) proposal. Four theoretical elements were considered: intentionality, foresight, self-reactivity, and self-reflection. Participants were 254 students enrolled in Physical Culture and Sports (n = 85), Engineering (n = 62) and Psychology (n = 107) programs. They were selected by an intentional, non-probabilistic sampling at a public university in northwestern Mexico. The tetra-factorial model of personal agency resulting from a confirmatory factor analysis presents adequate goodness of fit. The construction and validity of this scale have both methodological and practical implications in addressing the need to homogenize the concept of personal agency and its four dimensions in university students. The scale can be used in the diagnosis and promotion of personal agency.

Keywords : personal agency; confirmatory factorial analysis; measurement model; Bandura; university students.

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