AGAS
Adolescent Girls Agency Survey
Adolescent Girls Agency
In 2018, community leaders from across East Africa identified a single, ultimate goal for their holistic and locally-rooted efforts to improve girls' lives.
That goal? Agency for every girl.
Agency is defined as a girl's ability to effect change in her own life and that of her community.
This collective agreement launched a multi-month process to identify shared outcomes that, when measured and shared, could demonstrate the collective impact of AMPLIFY Girls partner organizations. Through the use of research and analytical tools designed for collective input and concept mapping, a top priority emerged for the collective: girls' agency. Despite coming from a wide range of sectors (health, education, economic empowerment, and more), the research indicated clearly that CDOs would consider themselves successful if the girls they served showed, more than anything else, notable increases in agency over time.
Adolescent Girls Agency Survey (AGAS)
The Adolescent Girls Agency Survey (AGAS) is a psychometric survey tool designed to capture the multidimensional construct of girls' agency (or agentic capacity) and to assign a numeric score to this capacity in adolescent girls. AGAS was developed by Dr. Aubryn Sidle and Dr. Brenda Oulo of GAL Consulting in collaboration with AMPLIFY Girls and our network of partners.
Developed and validated from 2018 – 2024, AGAS characterizes agency as both a girl's personal belief in her ability combined with the skills needed to effect change in her own life and world. The localized tool is currently in use by our partner organizations across a multitude of settings to measure the outcomes of their life skills programs.
Adolescent Girls Agency Portal
In 2024 – 2026, we've pivoted our focus to the widespread dissemination of the survey, positioning AMPLIFY Girls as an evidence broker between the CDOs using the survey and global actors seeking high-impact programming for adolescent girls.
Our dissemination tactics centered on the launch of the Adolescent Girls Agency Portal, which has allowed us to grant access to AGAS to our network and organizations far beyond it. The portal features automated analysis and a suite of training options that guide organizations on leveraging their results for evaluation, fundraising, or advocacy purposes.
Visit the Agency Portal →
AMPLIFY Girls and GAL Consulting
AMPLIFY Girls has been in partnership with Dr. Aubryn Allyn Sidle and Dr. Brenda Oulo since the founding of our network. Beginning in 2018, Drs. Sidle and Oulo worked with AMPLIFY Girls partner organizations to co-create a framework for adolescent girls' agency, which later served as the basis for AGAS.
In 2023, Drs. Sidle and Oulo founded Girls Agency Lab (GAL) Consulting, LLC — a research consulting firm dedicated to the practice and measure of girls' agency. Today, AMPLIFY Girls and GAL Consulting collaborate on agency-focused research projects, and continue to co-own and operate AGAS and the Adolescent Girls Agency Portal.