Societal changes significantly influence how autistic young adults understand autism. The approach, whether agentic or passive, that they adopt to understand the relationship between self and autism plays a crucial role in their identity development and psychosocial adaptation. The current study explored the effects of demographic covariates, self-acceptance, and agency on self-efficacy and quality of life (QOL) among autistic young adults. A total of 204 autistic young adults, ages 18 to 26 years, were recruited from Prolific and Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and completed an online survey. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine relationships among study variables. The hierarchical regression model indicated that gender and self-acceptance were significant predictors of self-efficacy and QOL. Agency in defining autism, where autistic young adults actively redefine their autism, was found to have a significant positive impact on self-efficacy and QOL, even after controlling demographic covariates and self-acceptance. To achieve positive psychosocial outcomes, autistic young adults need to take an agentic approach to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between self and autism. Future research should further explore the role of agency in the psychosocial adaptation process and explore how this concept can be integrated into practical applications.
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