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theses

The empowerment construct has been central in theories and practice interventions across many health and social science disciplines. However, research and evaluation studies measuring empowerment within international community development initiatives are rare due to a lack of validated measures appropriate for the cultural context. This study represents an initial empirical effort to validate the Azerbaijani Empowerment Scale (AES), an instrument designed to assess intrapersonal component of psychological empowerment among adult community residents in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet country with a secular Muslim culture. The participants (n = 350) were recruited in urban and rural communities using a purposeful sampling strategy. The present study examined the underlying factor structure of the AES instrument and its associations with conceptually related variables (i.e., community participation, sense of community, depression, and alienation). Exploratory factor analysis suggested that the AES instrument included three dimensions: leadership competence, policy control, and beliefs in community action. Partial correlations demonstrated that the AES measure was related with other variables in expected ways. Results of a path analysis indicated that the hypothesized model provided a good fit to the data from the sample of community residents in Azerbaijan. Specifically, both sense of community and community participation had direct, positive effects on all three empowerment subscales. In addition, a direct effect of depression on leadership competence was found, as well as indirect effects on all three dimensions of empowerment through its relationships with sense of community and community participation. Alienation was found to have a direct, negative effect on beliefs in community action, as well as indirect effects on all three subscales of empowerment through its relationship with community participation. Findings supported the reliability and validity of the AES. This study contributes to empowerment theory by examining its applicability to the community context in Azerbaijan. The AES instrument can be useful to health and social science researchers in the region of the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Practical implications of this study include the recommendation of a new, culturally-appropriate and validated instrument to evaluate empowerment-oriented interventions and guide development of evidence-based policies and practices in Azerbaijan and neighboring countries.

ETD_5404

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Aleksandr M. Cheryomukhin

doi:10.7282/T3ZW1J6F

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.