Agency & Voice

The Youth Empowerment Scale (YES) includes three domains: voice, freedom of movement, and behavioural control and decision-making. The Voice subscale assesses young people’s perceived ability to express opinions and feelings, advocate for themselves and others, and influence decisions within their immediate environment (e.g., family, school, and community).

The graphs show the distribution of scores on the YES Voice subscale for all participants, and split by sex, on the first occasion that they completed the BrainWaves Cohort Study questionnaire.

The overall distribution shows more higher empowerment scores than lower, and the male scores show slightly better average empowerment than the female scores.

The BrainWaves Cohort Study has collected responses from over 24,000 people aged 16-18 in schools across the UK, over three time points in 2024 and 2025.