Empowerment Scale
Rogers‚ Ralph‚ & Mark‚ 2010
Making decisions
Rogers‚ Chamberlin‚ Ellison‚ & Crean‚ 1997
Revised Shortened Version
1. I can pretty much determine what will happen in my life.
2. People have more power if they join together as a group.
3. Getting angry about something never helps.
4. Getting angry about something never helps. *
5. I have a positive attitude toward myself.
6. I am usually confident about the decisions I make.
7. People have no right to get angry just because they don’t like something.
8. Most of the misfortunes in my life were due to bad luck.
9. I see myself as a capable person.
10.Making waves never gets you anywhere.
11.People working together can have an effect on their community.
12.I am often able to overcome barriers.
13.I am generally optimistic about the future.
14.When I make plans‚ I am almost certain to make them work.
15.Getting angry about something is often the first step toward changing it.*
16.Usually I feel alone.
17.Experts are in the best position to decide what people should do or learn.
18.I am able to do things as well as most other people.
19.I generally accomplish what I set out to do.
20.People should try to live their lives the way they want to.
21.You can’t fight city hall.*
22.I feel powerless most of the time.
23.When I am unsure about something‚ I usually go along with the rest of the group.
24.I feel I am a person of worth‚ at least on an equal basis with others.
25.People have the right to make their own decisions‚ even if they are bad ones.
26.I feel I have a number of good qualities.
27.Very often a problem can be solved by taking action.
28.Working with others in my community can help to change things for the better.
* 3 items to be removed from the ES
Self-esteem and efficacy‚ power and powerlessness‚ optimism and control over the future‚ community activism and autonomy‚ and righteous anger.
Self-esteem (α =.82); power and powerlessness (α =.59); community activism and autonomy (α =.59); optimism and control over the future (α =.45); and righteous anger (α =.64)
1= Strongly Agree‚ 2= Agree‚ 3= Disagree‚ 4= Strongly Disagree
This instrument can be found at: http://cosp.mimhtraining.com/media/cosp%20technical%20papers/COSP%20TR%203_Empowerment.pdf & http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ps.2010.61.9.933
Rogers‚ E.S.‚ Chamberlin‚ J.‚ Ellison‚ M.I.‚ & Crean‚ T. (1997). A consumer-constructed scale to measure empowerment among users of mental health services. Psychiatric Services‚ 48‚ 1042-1047.
Rogers‚ E. S.‚ Ralph‚ O.‚ & Salzer‚ M. S. (2010). Validating the empowerment scale with a multisite sample of consumers of mental health services. Psychiatric Services‚ 61‚ 933–936.
Rogers‚ Ralph‚ & Mark‚ (2010). The Empowerment Scale brief sense of community scale. In: Simmons C. A.‚ Lehmann P. (eds). Tools for strengths-based assessment and evaluation‚ New York‚ NY: Springer‚ pp. 360-363. (2013). Google Scholar