Development of a measure of intrapersonal empowerment.

Abstract

This article reports the development of a self-report instrument that measures 4 components of intrapersonal empowerment for people with disabilities. Subscales are Personal Competence, Group Orientation, Self-Determination, and Positive Identity as a Person With a Disability. Psychometric data indicate that subscales are reliable and support trait validity of the instrument. All 64 items with scoring key and preliminary norms are included so that interested readers can use the instrument in research studies and assessment applications. Empowerment refers generally to the capacity of disenfranchised people to understand and become active participants in matters that affect their lives. With origins in the community-development movement of the late 1970s, empowerment has become the human-service philosophy of the 1990s, and the language of empowerment now pervades the rhetoric of politicians, management consultants, and human-service professionals, including rehabilitation specialists. Despite the popularity of empowerment in current rehabilitation literature, ranging from expositions of empowerment philosophy to how-to-do-it presentations for rehabilitation professionals, there have been no attempts to comprehensively define and measure the concept. Work by Zimmerman and his colleagues (i.e., Zimmerman, 1990; Zimmerman, Israel, Schulz, & Checkoway, 1992; Zimmerman & Rappaport, 1988), who have conducted the bulk of the empirical research on empowerment, helps provide the foundation for developing a comprehensive measure of empowerment. For example, Zimmerman et al. (1992) proposed a conceptual model of psychological empowerment consisting of three components: intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral. Generally, the intrapersonal component refers to how people think about their capacity to influence social and political systems important to them. More specifically, the intrapersonal component treats empowerment as a personality variable that encompasses intrapsychic processes such as perceived control, self-efficacy, sense of community, and perceived competence. Rehabilitation Psychology, 1998, Vol. 43, No. 2, 131-142 Copyright 1998 by the Educational Publishing Foundation, 0090-5550/98/$3.00 131 Th is d oc um en t i s c op yr ig ht ed b y th e A m er ic an P sy ch ol og ic al A ss oc ia tio n or o ne o f i ts a lli ed p ub lis he rs . Th is a rti cl e is in te nd ed so le ly fo r t he p er so na l u se o f t he in di vi du al u se r a nd is n ot to b e di ss em in at ed b ro ad ly . 732 Bolton and Brookings The interactional component includes knowledge about needed resources and problem-solving skills, and the behavioral component refers to specific actions taken to exercise influence through participation in organizations and activities. The current investigation focuses on Zimmerman and colleagues' intrapersonal component of empowerment, because it can be argued that empowerment is ultimately a personological construct that reflects the degree to which the values and attitudes associated with empowerment have been internalized. In other words, empowerment entails the acquisition of values and attitudes that are incorporated into the individual's personal worldview and thus constitutes a foundation for action. Because intrapersonal empowerment is an internalized orientation consisting of traits and behavioral predispositions, it follows that the construct is amenable to measurement by standard self-report questionnaire methods. The need for a psychometrically acceptable measure of intrapersonal empowerment was expressed by Zimmerman et al. (1992), who recommended that factor-analytic studies be undertaken to develop an instrument that would comprehensively measure the intrapersonal component of empowerment. Sciarappa and Rogers (1991) assembled the only instrument in rehabilitation constructed to measure empowerment. They constructed a self-report instrument called the Making Decisions scale to measure individual empowerment. The Making Decisions scale consists of 28 items adapted from existing measures of locus of control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. A standard 4-point response format is used to indicate feelings about each of the 28 items. The responses of 100 people with psychiatric disabilities who were members of two self-help programs were analyzed to reduce an original set of 46 items to 28 items that best measured empowerment. The total empowerment score had an internal consistency reliability coefficient of .85, and it correlated positively with community activism and educational achievement. The Making Decisions scale is based on the assumption that empowerment is a unidimensional construct. The purpose of this research was to develop a multidimensional instrument that comprehensively measures the intrapersonal component of psychological empowerment for people with disabilities.

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