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Journal of Family Violence,Vol. 1L No. 2, 1996

Perceptions of Control, Depressive Symptomatology, and Self-Esteem of Women in Transition from Abusive Relationships Tammy A. Orava, 1 Peter J. McLeod, 1 and Donald Sharpe I

The relation between women's histories of experiencing violence and current psychological health were examined. Locus of control, feelings of personal power, depressive symptomatology, self-esteem, and judgments of control over a contingently responsive computer display were investigated in groups of 21 abused women and 18 comparison women. Within the sample of abused women, relationships between severity of abuse and the psychological variables were also examined. The group of abused women had lower beliefs in self-efficacy, were more depressed, and had lower self-esteem than the comparison women. There were no differences found, however, between the two groups in perceptions of control on the computer taslc Severity of physical abuse among the abused women was positively correlated with depression scores. Verbal abuse was found to contribute significantly to many of the between-group differences. Empirical evidence of the positive impact of transition house residence on the abused women's mental health was also presented. The importance of future research into both the differential effects of verbal and physical abuse on women and the role of the transition house in empowering abused women were discussed. KEY WORDS: spouse abuse; control; depression; self-esteem.

1Department of Psychology, Acadia University, WoLfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tammy Orava, who is now at the Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, PO Box 4400, Frederic'ton, New Brunswick, E3B 5A3, Canada. 167 0885-7482/96/0600-0167509-~0/09 1996 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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INTRODUCTION Spouse abuse is a major problem in today's society. Recent statistics indicate that one-quarter of women have been victims of violence by a male partner (Statistics Canada, 1993). Symptoms of depression, anxiety, anger, low self-esteem, and perceptions of powerlessness have been reported in studies of abused women (e.g., Cascardi and O'Leary, 1992; Walker, 1981, 1991). A comprehensive understanding of the psychological factors afflicted by the experience of abuse can be used to assist therapists in helping women extricate themselves from abusive relationships and recover from the adverse effects. This is important because prolonged exposure to abuse can lead to more serious conditions [e.g., Borderline Personality Disorder, as suggested by Graham and Rawlings (1991)]. Our experimental study presents an analysis of several of the most serious potential psychological consequences of abuse in women residing in transition houses.

PERCEIVED CONTROL Beliefs about control have been shown to influence human functioning and behavior, and lack of perceived control has been related to poor mental health (e.g., Holder and Levi, 1988; Schulz, 1976; Strickland, 1978). In the present context, learned helplessness (Seligman, 1975) refers to an abused woman's perception that she lacks control to terminate abuse because of the experience of noncontingency between her actions (e.g., attempts to appease her spouse) and the outcome (e.g., physical violence). It has been theorized that as a result of such learned helplessness, she relinquishes efforts to change her circumstances, thereby making it difficult to extricate herself from the relationship (Walker, 1979). The reformulated learned helplessness model of Abramson et at (1978) provides a better illustration of why some women remain in abusive relationships whereas others leave. In this model, individuals are theorized to make causal attributions as to their experienced noncontingency along three orthogonal dimensions (i.e., internal vs. external, stable vs. unstable, and global vs. specific), affecting degree of self-blame, the chronicity, and the generality of the helplessness. Strube (1988) suggested that internal, stable, and global attributions, which increase severity of learned helplessness, may characterize women who remain in abusive situations. Therefore, depending on the attributions made for their experience "some women may leave the relationship, whereas others may succumb to the self-perpetuating cycle of learned helplessness" (Strube, 1988, p. 244).

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The literature on perceived control in battered women is mainly descriptive and subjective (e.g., Pagelow, 1984; Sinclair, 1985; Walker, 1979). The present study adds to the empirical research conducted on abused women's perceptions of control through use of a computerized judgment of control task. This was a new method for assessing perceived control in this population, although judgments of control over computer presented stimuli have been examined in other special populations, such as depressed college students (Benassi and Mahler, 1985) and learning disabled adolescent males (Fuller and McLeod, 1995). As a result of the perceived lack of contingency between responses and outcomes that battered women are proposed to experience (Douglas and Strom, 1988; Sinclair, 1985; Strube, 1988; Walker, 1984), it was predicted that abused women would report less control over a computer-animated stimulus than their nonabused counterparts. The cognitive deficit of learned helplessness theory postulates that there will be a difficulty in learning that responses and outcomes are contingent after repeated exposure to noncontingency (Seligman, 1975). It was expected, therefore, that abuse victims would be less sensitive to changes in contingency between their behavior and outcomes on the computerized judgment of control task.

LOCUS OF CONTROL There have been contradictory findings in the literature on the locus of control of abused women. Walker (1984) unexpectedly found abused women both in and out of abusive relationships to be more internally controlled than a normative sample. She also found abused women out of abusive relationships to have greater beliefs in control by powerful others, and women both in and out of abusive relationships to have greater beliefs in control by chance compared to normative data. Both Launius and Lindquist (1988) and Edleson et al. (1991) found no differences in attributions of control between battered and nonbattered women. Long (1986), however, found abused women to be more externally controlled than a group of college students (but found no difference between professionals or therapy clients and abused women). Because of the lack of both control and predictability of battering behavior, it was hypothesized that abused women would be less internally oriented and have more belief in control by powerful others and chance than nonabused women. Women experiencing different degrees of abuse may also exhibit distinct control perceptions, which could help explain the disparate findings in the literature. Thus, for the present study, those women who experienced a more severe abuse situation were predicted to be less

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internal in their locus of control orientation, and to have more of a belief in control by powerful others and chance than those who experienced a less severe situation.

PERSONAL POWER Personal power is a construct representing a person's belief that he or she can effect change in social conditions (O'Neill et al., 1988). It was examined in this study to explore the extent of generalization of perceptions from the abusive situation. Following from the expectation of less internal orientations of abused women, it was predicted that they would perceive less personal power than nonabused women. It was also expected that those women who experienced more severe abuse situations would feel less personal power than those who experienced less severe abuse.

DEPRESSION

There has been convincing research (e.g., Jaffe et al., 1985, 1986; Walker, 1984; Webster-Stratton and Hammond, 1988) relating abuse to feelings of depression. On the basis of this past research, it was predicted that abused women would be more depressed than nonabused women. Cascardi and O'Leary (1992) reported that as the frequency and severity of physical aggression experienced by a group of battered women increased, depressive symptomatology increased and self-esteem decreased. On the basis of Cascardi and O'Leary, comparable results by Kemp et al. (1991), and GeUes and Harrop's (1989) finding that psychological distress increases with the level of husband-to-wife violence, it was predicted that those women with histories of more severe abuse would be more depressed than those with histories of less severe abuse.

SELF-ESTEEM There have been few empirical tests of the notion that battered women have low self-esteem. Both Semmelman (1983) and Hartik (1982) found evidence of lower self-esteem in their research with groups of battered women. Walker (1984), however, found the opposite results but did not employ a control group in her study. On the basis of observations throughout the literature and the studies employing control groups, it was predicted that abused women would exhibit lower self-esteem than nonabused


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women. The present study also examined the relationship between self-esteem and the severity of abuse among abused women. On the basis of Cascardi and O'Leary's (1992) findings, it was predicted that those women who experienced more severe abuse would exhibit lower self-esteem. Defining a woman as abused in this study was limited to the experience of physical abuse; however, the psychological abuse that accompanies physical victimization was also explored for its influence on dependent variables. Khan et aL (1993) found that psychological abuse was more closely associated with psychological disturbance (as measured by the Minnesota MUltiphasic Personality Inventory-2) than was a history of physical abuse, and in several investigations abused women attested to the greater impact of psychological abuse over physical abuse (FoUingstad et at, 1990; Herbert et at, 1991; Walker, 1984). In this study, differences between abused and control groups on psychological variables were examined while statistically controlling for frequency of verbal abuse experienced. Lastly, we examined the impact of transition houses in assisting battered women to recover from the effects of abuse. In addition to providing a physically safe environment for abused women, transition houses are said to empower abused women by encouraging independence and increasing a sense of personal control (Margolin and Burman, 1993; Walker, 1981). There has been a lack of systematic research, however, on effectiveness of transition houses. It is hypothesized that over the length of stay in the houses, battered women would feel more internally controlled, less depressed, and have higher self-esteem.

METHOD

Subjects A total of 55 women solicited from two populations consented to participate in a study of factors related to women's histories in intimate relationships. A sample of 21 abused women was accessed from a rural transition house in Nova Scotia, Canada, and three urban transition houses in New Brunswick, Canada. Permission to request volunteers was obtained from the directors of each of the houses. Maximum length of stay for the women at these houses was from 4 to 6 weeks, and houses could accommodate from 17 to 24 women and children. Their mandate is to provide safety and support to physically, sexually, and emotionally abused women and their children. In addition to being transition house residents, during the 12 months prior to the study, this group of women must have experienced at least two incidents of physical abuse by men with whom they had

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intimate relationships. Sessions were conducted individually in rooms in each of the houses. A comparison group of 18 women was recruited through advertisements, community college classes, and community groups in rural Nova Scotia. These women had never sought refuge from their partners in a transition house and had no experience of physical violence in the year prior to data collection. For this group, sessions were conducted in a university laboratory room or in a room provided by the community college. All data were collected by the first author. Sixteen participants were excluded from the two samples described above. These participants included 2 women from the transition house sample who experienced less than two incidents of physical abuse and 14 women from the community sample who had experienced any number of incidents of physical abuse in the past year and/or had resided at a transition house in the past. Demographic characteristics of the abused and control groups are presented in Table I. There were no significant differences between the groups in age, F(1, 37) = 2.12, number of children, F(1, 37) = 0.01, or employment status (employed vs. unemployed), F(1, 37) = 1.01. Although we attempted to match the groups for socioeconomic status, groups did differ in their level of education, F(1, 37) = 7.00, p < .05, with the control group being more highly educated. [Because the groups differed in level of education, we examined the relationship between education and each of the dependent measures. Education was only significantly related to the variable of belief in chance control (r[37] = -.32, p < .05).] In terms of relationship status, in the abused group, 52% were married, 33% had been living cornTable L Demographic Characteristics of the Abused and Comparison Women

Characteristic Age (in years) Number of children Educationa: Less than high-school diploma High-school diploma/some college or vocational training Employment status: Employed Unemployed ap < .05.

Abused Group

Control Group

(n = 21)

(,, = 18)

M

SD

33.9 2.4

%

M

SD

12.8

39.8

12.5

1.6

2.4

1.7

%

61.9

22.2

38.1

77.8

23.8 76.2

38.9 61.1


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mort-law, and 14% were single. In the comparison group, 67% were marfled, 17% were living common-law, 11% were divorced, and 5% were single and never married. Measures

The following five standardized measures were administered to the participants:

Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS) Abuse was measured by the CTS, Couple Form R (Straus and Gelles, 1990). This is a 19-item questionnaire designed to measure three modes of behavior used in conflict between family members: reasoning, verbal aggression, and physical aggression. Participants were asked to indicate the frequency with which their partners engaged in each of the behaviors during the year prior to the assessment. These behaviors ranged from "discussed an issue calmly" to "used to knife or fired a gun." Factor analyses have confirmed existence of three dimensions. There is evidence of adequate internal consistency for both the Verbal Aggression (.80) and Physical Aggression (.83) scales, and evidence for validity of the CTS (see Straus and Gelles, 1990). The method chosen for scoring the CTS was to compute the "Frequency Weighted Scale" for the Verbal Aggression subscale and the "Severity Weighted Scale" for the Physical Aggression subscale. The Reasoning subscale was not included for analyses because of its low reliability and validity (see Straus and Gelles, 1990). Items in the Verbal Aggression subscale were recoded from the arbitrary response category code values of 0 to 6 to frequency scores and then summed. Items in the Physical Aggression subscale were recoded to frequency scores that were multiplied by severity weights (as indicated by Straus and Gelles, 1990) and then summed, thereby taking into account both the frequency and the injury producing potential of each physically aggressive act.

Internality, Powerful Others, and Chance Scales Internality (I), Powerful Others (P), and Chance (C) scales measure individuals' beliefs concerning three independent dimensions of control-two separate dimensions of external control and a single internal dimension (Levenson, 1974). The I Scale measures the belief that one has control

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over one's own life; the P Scale concerns the belief that powerful others control the events in one's life; and the C Scale measures the belief in control by chance or fate. Each scale is comprised of eight items requiring ratings on a 7-point Likert scale (ranging from -3 to +3). Levenson's (1981) review of research on the I, P, and C scales showed that their reliability and validity have been satisfactorily established.

Personal Power Scale The Personal Power scale (O'Neill et al., 1988) consists of 11 items that measure an individual's sense of personal power in effecting social change. Respondents reply to each statement by indicating whether they tend to agree or disagree with it by answering "yes" or "no." Test-retest reliability and both convergent and discriminant validity have been shown to be satisfactory (O'Neill et aL, 1988; O'Neill and Thibeault, 1986).

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) The BDI (Beck, 1972) is a 21-item self-report scale that measures the cognitive, affective, somatic, and behavioral symptoms of depression in adolescents and adults. Each item has a 4-point rating scale from 0 to 3. The BDI is a reliable and valid measure (Beck, 1972) and has been used extensively in research, including a number of studies on contingency judgment (e.g., Alloy and Abramson, 1979; Benassi and Mahler, 1985).

Self-Esteem Scale The Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) consists of 10 items that measure an individual's global feelings of self-worth. Items require the respondent to report positive or negative feelings about the self on a 4-point scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." Blascovich and Tomaka's (1991) review of the scale indicated adequate reliability and validity.

Apparatus The DOS-based computer program, Contiception (McLeod and Spenee, 1995), created a simple animated display presented on an i486/SL laptop microcomputer with a 9.5 in. active-matrix color LCD display. This program allows the experimenter to control both probability of a response


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to participants' actions and rate of random (non-responsive) changes in an animated display. Animation consisted of a colored circle (0.7 cm in diameter) that moved in a circular path (3 era in radius) around a center fixation point at a rate of approximately one revolution every 2.8 s. Partieipants watched a green circle moving around the computer screen that changed directions unpredictably an average of 15 times per trial. The extent to which participants could cause additional changes in direction by pressing a specified key varied among trials. The experimental protocol consisted of eight 45-s trials per participant. Trials were presented in random orders. Responsiveness to key presses (presp = .00, .33, .67, or 1.00) and necessity (presence or absence of random changes) were the variables manipulated in a factorial design [2 (group) x 2 (necessity) x 4 (responsiveness)]. Dimension of the animation controlled by key presses was direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise). Rate of random direction changes during the trials in which a key press was unnecessary to cause a change was set at an average of one every 3 s. Prior to the eight experimental trials, there was one practice trial presented to all participants in order for them to become familiar with the task. This trial continued until each participant understood what was expected. The dimension controlled by key presses was direction, and to minimize carryover effects, there was both a different responsiveness level (i.e., pr~sp = .50) and random change rate (i.e., on average every 6 s) in this trial.

Procedure

Participants were tested individually in a 1-hr session. They first completed the computer task after being instructed to determine the extent to which they were controlling changes in the direction of animation in the practice trial and each of eight 45-s experimental trials. In order to equate amount of information available to participants across trials and to prevent influencing the actual contingencies (see Watson, 1979), they were asked to press the key approximately the same number of times in each trial. To assist with this, a counter at the top of the computer screen was provided to enable participants to monitor the number of key presses they made during each trial. After each trial, the experimenter asked the participants: "How much control did you have over the direction changes on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no control and 10 is complete control?" Following their responses, they were then asked: "How much confidence do you have in the accuracy of that judgment on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no confidence and 10 is complete confidence?"

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After the computer task, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire booklet consisting of a demographic sheet and four questionnaires presented in the following order: Leveuson's I, P, and C scales; the Personal Power scale; the BDI; and the Self-Esteem Scale. The CTS was then administered orally. Each participant was debriefed at the conclusion of the session.

~S~TS Experience of Abuse

By definition, the two groups differed in the severity of physical violence they experienced in the year prior to assessment, F(1, 37) = 9.07, p < .01. The women in the abused group experienced an average of 39.5 (SD = 52.1) incidents of physical aggression within the past year, with the frequency ranging from 2 to 184 incidents. As would be expected, the physically abused women also experienced significantly more incidents of verbal abuse than the control women, F(1, 37) = 55.08, p < .001. On average, the abused women reported 99.4 (SD = 37.6) incidents of verbal abuse within the past year, with a range of 10 to 150 incidents, whereas the control women reported an average of 21.3 (SD = 25.9) incidents, with a range of 0 to 76 incidents. Although the comparison group of women experienced a significant number of verbal abuse experiences, this abuse did not involve any threats of violence. Between-Group Analyses

Table II presents a summary of the scores of the abused and control groups of women, the univariate F values, and the F values controlling for frequency of verbal abuse. On Levenson's scales, abused women were found to be less internally oriented and to have stronger beliefs in control by both powerful others and chance than the control group. Abused women were also found to feel less personal power, to be significantly more depressed, and to have lower self-esteem than control women. In examining the results obtained from covarying frequency of verbal abuse from the univariate F values, it was evident that many of the between-group differences were lost in the analyses. Most importantly, no between-group differences on personal power or depression remained. The between-group differences also became nonsignificant for the variables


177

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measuring belief in control by powerful others and chance, and the group difference in self-esteem was reduced. These data suggest that influence of verbal abuse may account for many of the differences found between physically abused and nonabused women. A discriminant function analysis was performed to determine the set of variables that best differentiated the group of abused women from the group of control women. It assessed prediction of group membership (abused or control) from seven psychological variables after controlling for three demographic variables. The demographic variables of age, education, and employment status were entered first in a hierarchical analysis to control for even nonsignificant differences between the groups. The psychological variables, namely internality, belief in control by powerful others, belief in control by chance, sense of personal power, depression, and selfesteem, were entered in a stepwise analysis. There was no statistically significant separation between the two groups from the three demographic predictors alone, F(3, 35) = 2.63, p > .06. The analysis progressed through three more steps, first entering depression, then self-esteem, and lastly, belief in control by powerful others. On the basis of the six predictors (age, education, employment status, depression, self-esteem, and belief in control by powerful others), there was reliable association between groups and predictors, Z2(6) = 27.72, p < .001. The correlations between the predictor .variables and the canonical variates showed that the primary predictors (loadings of .50 and above) were depression, self-esteem, and personal power. The final classification equation correctly grouped 82% of the participants. Fifteen of the 18 participants (83%) were correctly classified in the control group, and 17 of the 21 participants (81%) were correctly classified in the abused group.

Judgments of Control The Contiception program uses randomized procedures to generate probabilistic responses (McLeod and Spence, 1995). It was therefore necessary to test for possible differences between groups in the outcome of these procedures before formal analyses were conducted. There were no group differences found in actual responsiveness levels received by participants, or in the amount of information they received prior to making their judgments of control. As illustrated in Table II, there were no group differences found in perceptions of control or in confidence ratings. A 2 (group) • 2 (necessity: presence or absence of random changes) • 4 (responsiveness: response probability) mixed-model ANOVA was performed on judgments of control to test the hypothesis that abused women


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would be less sensitive to changes in contingency than the control group. There were no significant main effects or interactions involving the group factor; therefore, there is no evidence from these data that the abused participants' control judgments were less sensitive to the changes in contingency. One subsequent analysis examined the effects of group (abused and control) and internality (high or low following a median split) on judgments of control. There was a marginally non-significant main effect for internality, F(1, 35) = 3.05,p < .09, with those high on internality reporting greater judgments of control. There was also an intriguing, albeit non-significant, interaction between internality and group, F(1, 35) = 1.79, p < .19. Comparison women high and low in internality did not differ in their judgments of control. Abused participants who were highly internal in their orientation, however, appeared to have a somewhat greater sense of control compared to abused participants with low scores on internality.

Within-Group Analyses Pearson product-moment correlations were conducted between severity of physical abuse experienced by participants within the abused group (n = 21, df = 19) and the dependent variables of interest. There were no significant correlations found between abuse and internality (r = .12), belief in control by powerful others (r = .16), belief in chance control (r = .25), sense of personal power (r = .02), or self-esteem (r = -.28). As predicted, there was a significant positive correlation between severity of abuse and depression scores (r = .52, p < .01). There was a strong positive correlation between the severity of physical abuse and the frequency of verbal abuse (r = .57, p < .01).

Length of Transition House Residence Analyses were conducted to examine influence of length of residence in transition houses on psychological variables of all the women who were residing in a transition house (n = 23). This group consisted of the 21 women in the abused group and 2 women who did not meet the criteria for inclusion in the abused group--1 having experienced only one incident of physical abuse in the past year, and the other having experienced no incidents in the past year. The mean length of stay at the time of assessment for this group was 10.8 days (SD = 9.0), ranging from a minimum of a half-day to a maximum of 31 days at the transition houses. Correlational analyses revealed that there were significant negative relationships between

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length of residence and belief in control by powerful others (r[21] = -.42, p < .05), and depression scores (r[21] = -.46, p < .05). A significant positive relationship was found between length of transition house stay and self-esteem (r[21] = .43, p < .05).

DISCUSSION The present study was designed to examine the relation between women's histories of abuse from a partner and current psychological health. Because this study utilized a cross-sectional design, there was no evidence for establishing causal relationships; however, significant differences between abused women and the control group that were observed can most reasonably be interpreted as reactions to or results of abuse that the women suffered.

Perceptions of Control Abused women were found to be more externally oriented, supporting the observations of Long (1986). The present data are in opposition to Walker's (1984) conclusion that abused women are more internally oriented than the norm. Support was found, however, for her findings on two external dimensions of control. Abused women in this study (who are comparable to Walker's sample of women who were out of the relationships) had greater beliefs in control by powerful others and chance than the comparison group. Correspondingly, the abused group perceived less personal power to effect social change. There was no relationship observed between severity of physical abuse and locus of control orientation or feelings of personal power. A computerized judgement of control task was utilized in the present study to provide objective data as to perceptions of control in a sample of abused women. There were no apparent differences between the two groups on this task--the abused women did not exhibit lower perceptions of control, nor were they less sensitive to the changes in contingency. Furthermore, abused women were as confident in their judgments of control as the comparison group. There is no evidence, therefore, that effects of experiencing abuse extend to basic perceptions of control. There is some inconclusive evidence, however, that abused women with an external locus of control have lower perceptions of control than abused women with an internal locus of control.


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Although abused women held lower beliefs in self-efficacy, reported depressive symptomatology, and had experiences of noncontingent battering, they were not impaired in the ability to evaluate contingencies. Consistent with findings of Alloy and Abramson (1982) and Ford and Neale (1985), no support was found for the cognitive deficit of learned helplessness theory. It is possible that present results were obtained because the computer task was a nonsocial activity removed from everyday experience, therefore not influenced by the very social experience of battering.

Depression Abused women reported significantly more depressive symptomatology than the control group of women, supporting previous reports (e.g., Jaffe et aL, 1985, 1986; Walker, 1984; Webster-Stratton and Hammond, 1988). Approximately 33% of the abused women scored 30 and over on the BDI, reflecting extremely severe levels of depression. Having a history of experiencing abuse appears to have had an enormous impact on these women's feelings of depression. As Cascardi and O'Leary (1992) and Kemp et al. (1991) also concluded, depression scores increased as the frequency and severity of abuse increased within the sample of abused women. Depression, then, appears to be clearly related to the experience of domestic violence.

Self-Esteem Abused women in the present study were found to have lower self-esteem than the comparison group of women. This is consistent with Semmelman's (1982) and Hartik's (1982) findings, and provides more evidence against the report of Walker (1984) that battered women had high self-esteem. Self-esteem did not decrease with increases in severity of violence within the abused group.

Distinguishing Abused from Comparison Women Results indicated that factors that best distinguished abused from comparison women were depression, belief in control by powerful others, and self-esteem. Although participants in the present study had left their abusive relationships, these factors help explain why many women remain in abusive relationships. Given the profile of abused women, interventions regarding increasing perceived control in individuals feeling helpless would

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be appropriate (e.g., Douglas and Strom, 1988; Walker, 1977-1978, 1991). Because abused women were found to have feelings of powerlessness, depression, and low self-esteem, interventions designed to encourage women to make decisions and experience competence and mastery in the environment may assist in altering these negative self-perceptions. The Importance of Verbal Abuse

Verbal abuse was found to be a common event in the relationships of the women who participated in the present study (with the frequency increasing as the frequency and severity of physical abuse increased). This study was not designed to explore the differential effects of verbal and physical abuse in intimate relationships; however, the data that were obtained from the present study highlight the importance of consideration of the effect of verbal abuse on the psychological variables under investigation. The two groups studied differed not only in their experience of violence, but also in the amount of verbal abuse experienced, with the physically abused women reporting significantly more verbal abuse. When the influence of verbal abuse was removed from comparisons between the groups, the majority of the between-group differences were diminished. This suggests that verbal abuse was contributing to the differing scores of the two samples in their belief in control by powerful others and chance, sense of personal power, depressive symptomatology, and self-esteem. This psychological abuse--verbal and nonverbal acts that symbolically hurt the other, and the use of threats to hurt the other (Straus and Gelles, 1990)has an important impact on one's psychological health. Investigations of abused women have mainly been restricted to women who fit varying definitions relating to the experienced of physical violence, with the effect of psychological abuse not directly confronted in the literature. The study of the experience Of physical abuse has the advantage of being more clearly defined and assessed than the more ambiguous psychological and emotional abuse. Present data suggest, however, that more attention should be focused on the serious consequences of verbal abuse on the mental health of women. Margolin and Burman (1993) reported that the primary goal of men's treatment programs is the cessation of violent behavior. Although some programs have more broad goals of resocialization, success tends to be judged by the rate of subsequent violence. Increasing evidence of the longterm effects of psychological abuse (which may be intensified with a reduction in physical abuse), may have implications for treatment plans for male abusers.


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The Impact of Transition Houses Our data indicate a significant positive effect of women's stay at transition houses. The residents' belief in control by powerful others decreased, and they reported less depressive symptomatology and higher self-esteem as their length of stay increased. Walker (1981) argued that transition houses help women through re-empowerment, and this is supported by the present results. Although there has been a proliferation of transition houses, there has not been much research on the impact they have on battered women or the processes occurring within the houses themselves (Berk et al., 1986). They are a resource utilized by many abused women and their children; it is important, therefore, for research to explore the role of transition houses. Finding evidence of the impact of transition houses and processes by which they help women overcome psychological distress could lead to improvements in services provided to victims.

The Necessity of Social Change The most important therapeutic goal identified in the literature on treatment of battered women is "empowerment," meaning aiding battered women in finding their own strength (Walker, 1991). Both PriUeltensky (1994) and Ryan-Finn and Albee (1994) would argue that whereas individual empowerment strategies will be beneficial to those women who are fortunate enough to obtain treatment, without fundamental social change there will be no improvement in the lives of the women in the community at large. Although individual work can be done to treat effects of victimization in psychotherapy, this is not an adequate response to a pervasive social problem. More attention must be focused on prevention of male violence against women through such methods as education of alternatives to violence and attitudinal change toward the role of women. In addition, the serious impact of verbal abuse must be disseminated to the public because this type of abuse is not often recognized as being as psychologically damaging as physical victimization. Major limitations of the present study are shared by most research involving battered women. Our study investigated the psychological wellbeing of abused women who sought refuge in transition houses. This selective sample is not representative of the general population of abused women, particularly those women who have not left the abusive situations. The lower socioeconomic status and small sample size of the groups of abused and control women also limit the generalizability of the findings. The present study, however, did employ a control group of participants,

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absence of which is a weakness in much research in this area. Because of the correlational nature of the data, interpretation of results suggestive of causal direction must be considered speculative. A final limitation of the study is the use of the CTS measure of verbal aggression. Items of this scale are limited as a measure of psychological abuse because they do not evaluate dominance and isolation in a relationship, which have been shown by Tolman (1989) to be important components of nonphysical abuse. Use of a more comprehensive measure of psychological abuse, such as the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory (Tolman, 1989) or the Measure of Wife Abuse (Rodenburg and Fantuzzo, 1993) would be an important refinement for future research. Results obtained from the present study emphasize the extent of psychological harm that accompanies physical and psychological abuse in a relationship. Much more research is needed on the interaction of these factors with practical concerns (e.g., economic conditions) and societal influences (e.g., public attitudes toward domestic violence) that contribute to women remaining in abusive situations. Additional research with larger, more diverse samples is needed to improve generalizability to women of different socioeconomic statuses and those who are not receiving services for victims of domestic violence.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article is based on a Master's thesis by the first author under the supervision of the second author at Acadia University. We wish to thank Myles Genest and Robin McGee for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this work. We also wish to thank the women who participated in the study and the staff at the transition houses for their support of this project. Portions of this article were presented at the annual convention of the Canadian Psychological Association in Chaflottetown, Prince Edward Island, June, 1995. This research was supported by a Graduate Fellowship from Acadia University to Tammy Orava and NSERC and Aid to Small Universities SSHRC grants to Peter McLeod.

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