Assessing Psychological Health and Empowerment in Women: The Personal Progress Scale Revised

ABSTRACT

Empowerment is a primary outcome of many health interventions with women. Typical outcome measures, however, focus exclusively on specific symptoms, neglecting the clinically important attitudes and behaviors associated with increased empowerment and well-being. Empowerment is conceptualized as enabling women to access skills and resources to cope more effectively with current as well as future stress and trauma. This study investigated a new measure of personal empowerment in women, the Personal Progress Scale-Revised (PPS-R). Results suggest that the PPS-R is a promising measure of empowerment in women, demonstrating excellent reliability and validity in diverse sample of women. Additionally, the PPS-R demonstrated preliminary utility with a subgroup of abused women, a vulnerable group of women for whom empowerment is a variable of high importance.

KEYWORDS:

• Empowerment
• resilience
• feminist therapy