Psychological empowerment in the South African military: The generalisability of Menon's Scale

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the factorial validity and internal consistency of the Menon Scale for Psychological Empowerment, developed in the United States and Canada and tested in Australia and Greece, in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). The 2231 participants in the study represented the gender and racial distribution of the military population. The South African data initially yielded a two-factor structure. A forced three-factor structure rendered acceptable alpha coefficients, but did not resemble the theoretically expected factors. The forced factor analyses were repeated for Africans, Asians and Coloureds, and Whites separately. Results for the first two groups kept the original structure, whereas the factor structure for the white participants resembled the theoretically hypothesised factors. The forced three-factor structures rendered very high internal consistencies for the total scale, but one factor for both the African and the Asian and Coloured groups showed unsatisfactory reliability, suggesting a single underlying empowerment factor. This was confirmed by high correlations between subscales. Menon’s model seemingly fits the South African data slightly better for the white participants than for their non-white counterparts. The scale thus needs to be revised for the different cultural groups.