Predicting stages of change in battered women

Abstract

Battered women's stages of change (SOCs) are examined in this study. First, confirmatory factor analysis and latent profile analysis were conducted on 754 battered women's responses on the Problems in Relationship Scale (Brown, 1998). Factor loadings were strong, and latent variable mixture modeling produces a two-class solution. Second, comparisons of women (including a subset of 276) suggest that they were relatively advanced in SOC. SOC was unrelated to intimate partner violence experiences, but an earlier stage was associated with ethnicity, economic and emotional dependence, preoccupied attachment, satisfaction with social supports, and women's use of aggression. Implications for interventions and future research are described.