Measuring interference with employment and education reported by women with abusive partners: preliminary data

This study examines the reliability and convergent validity of the Work/School Abuse Scale (W/SAS), a measure of the ways that abusive men interfere with women's participation in education and employment. Results indicate good reliability as measured by coefficient alpha and significant correlations with both a revised version of the Conflict Tactics Scale and the Psychological Abuse Index. The W/SAS is a useful measure of the ways in which physical force and other means of interfering with women's lives isolate them from activities that might provide income, social contacts, and a sense of accomplishment. It may also be used to examine whether changes in welfare policies affect levels of physical force and nonviolent interference in women's employment and education, as suggested by the Family Violence Option to the 1996 revisions in federal welfare policies.