Help-seeking personal agency is a frequently studied help-seeking perception construct and is incorporated into certain medical/health/social scientific theories used to studying health services treatment access. When studying the behavior of seeking help from a mental health professional, “personal agency” is shorthand for “perceived agency related to seeking help from a mental health professional.”

A variety of ad hoc measures of help-seeking personal agency have been used by scholars over time. See Dr. Hammer’s Publications page for such articles (e.g., Spiker, Berney, Hammer, & Jensen, 2020; Hammer, Parent, & Spiker, 2018). These measures vary in the degree to which they assess autonomy versus capacity elements of personal agency. These measures are generally adapted from Ajzen’s (2006; revised 2019) perceived behavioral control measure template for scholars wanting to construct direct measures for a Theory of Planned Behavior Questionnaire.

In October 2024, Hammer and colleagues (2024) published psychometric evidence of reliability and validity for a battery of mental health help seeking measures, including measures of the constructs of personal agency: autonomy and personal agency: capacity. A copy of those measures can be found in the supplemental material associated with that 2024 article. We welcome users to use/adapt those measures.

Alternatively, here is a similar 6-point Likert personal agency measure that we recommend, which has also been adapted from Ajzen’s (2006; revised 2019) perceived behavioral control measure template and refined over time by our research team. The first three items of this measure assess the autonomy element of personal agency and the last three items assess the capacity element of personal agency.

The instructions for this measure can be included immediately before the six items, if it this measure is the only IBM-HS intention/mechanism measure being included on your survey. However, if you are administering multiple IBM-HS intention/mechanism measures, then it is permissible to include these instructions at the start of the survey block containing the IBM-HS measures, as the instructions are the same for all IBM-HS intention/mechanism measures. Please note that this version of the measure assumes that the researcher is (1) administering this measure to a sample containing respondents with varying current levels of mental health distress including some respondents experiencing very little distress and thus have no real need to seek professional mental health care, thereby necessitating that the instructions defining measure items are framed conditionally/hypothetically (e.g., “would be up to me”; “I could seek”) and (2) not opting to use a clinical vignette design in which respondents are asked to imagine, for the purposes of responding to the IBM-HS measure items, that they were experiencing the symptoms and functional impairments described in a clinical vignette scenario provided to them in the start-of-survey instructions. If either 1 or 2 is not true, then the wording of the instructions and the items would need to be adjusted accordingly. Furthermore, like the default version of the MHSIS and MHSAS, this version of this personal agency measure does not specify time (e.g., “seeking help in the next 3 months”), so researchers who wish to specify a time frame should do so within each item of this measure like they would for all IBM-HS intention/mechanism measures. For more information, please refer to Steps 2 and 6 on the IBM-HS Mixed-Method Protocol page and IBM-HS Measurement Guidelines page.

Mental Help Seeking Personal Agency Scale
INSTRUCTIONS: For the purposes of this survey, “mental health professionals” include psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, and counselors. Likewise, “mental health concerns” include issues ranging from personal difficulties (e.g., loss of a loved one) to mental illness (e.g., anxiety, depression). Please select the response that best represents your opinion.

  1. If I had a mental health concern, my seeking help from a mental health professional would be up to me. [This item is rated on a Likert-type scale from 1 (Completely false) to 6 (Completely true)]
  2. If I had a mental health concern, my seeking help from a mental health professional would ___. [This item is rated on a Likert-type scale from 1 (Not be up to me) to 6 (Be up to me)]
  3. If I had a mental health concern, my seeking help from a mental health professional would ___. [This item is rated on a Likert-type scale from 1 (Not be under my control) to 6 (Be under my control)]
  4. If I had a mental health concern, I am confident that I could seek help from a mental health professional. [This item is rated on a Likert-type scale from 1 (Completely false) to 6 (Completely true)]
  5. If I had a mental health concern, I would have the ability to seek help from a mental health professional. [This item is rated on a Likert-type scale from 1 (Completely false) to 6 (Completely true)]
  6. If I had a mental health concern, I would be capable of seeking help from a mental health professional. [This item is rated on a Likert-type scale from 1 (Completely false) to 6 (Completely true)]

To cite this measure using APA-style:

Hammer, J. H. (n.d.). Mental Help Seeking Personal Agency Scale. Retrieved [Month] [Date], [Year], from https://helpseekingresearch.com/measures/personal-agency/

This Mental Help Seeking Personal Agency Scale assesses personal agency in a manner consistent with the definition of personal agency specified by the Integrated Behavioral Model of Mental Health Help Seeking (IBM-HS).

Because the earlier reasoned action tradition theories (i.e., Theory of Reasoned Action, Theory of Planned Behavior) use the term “perceived behavioral control” and do not provide strict guidance on the degree to which perceived behavioral control items must assess autonomy (sometimes called “control”) versus capacity (sometimes called “self-efficacy”) elements, this Mental Help Seeking Personal Agency Measure is also appropriate for measuring “perceived behavioral control”. However, we recommend that help seeking researchers use the IBM-HS and operationalize this measured construct as “personal agency”.

The two elements (i.e., autonomy and capacity) of personal agency may be best operationalized as either (a) two separate latent factors or (b) two inseparable facets of the same latent factor, depending on the measure, population, and sample in question. Thus, users are encouraged to use factor analysis to verify the dimensionality (and reliability) of this six-item set in their sample before committing to a given modeling and scoring strategy. In other words, it may be best to create one mean score that averages the scores across all six items to measure overall personal agency, or it may be best to create two mean scores, one that averages the scores across the first three items to measure personal agency: autonomy and one that averages the scores across the last three items to measure personal agency: capacity.