This study assessed an intervention designed to increase battered women's social support and make their existing support more responsive to their needs.
It is part of a larger project that uses a longitudinal, experimental design to examine the effects, over a 2-year period, of an advocacy intervention on battered women's overall psychological well-being and ability to remain free of abuse. Research participants were recruited from a domestic violence shelter in a medium-sized city in the Midwest. All women who stayed at the shelter at least one night and who did not move out of the general vicinity were considered eligible for the project, regardless of whether they returned to their assailants. Potential participants were informed that they would be interviewed after their shelter exit, 10 weeks thereafter, and at follow-up time periods. They were also told that, due to limited resources, only half of the participants, randomly selected, would receive the free services of trained advocates for 4 to 6 hours per week during the first 10 weeks after leaving the shelter. The results obtained are based on 141 participants, 71 of whom were randomly assigned to work with advocates. Social support was assessed by a measure developed by Bogat, Chin, Sabbath, and Schwartz (1983). This instrument measured two dimensions of social support described in the literature: functional and structural social support. Study results substantiated the strong relationship between social support and the psychological well-being of battered women. Women who were more satisfied with their social support were also more likely to be satisfied with their quality of life and to be less depressed. Women who had more close friends also reported being more pleased with their quality of life. Satisfaction with social support was apparently independent of the size of one's network. 2 tables and 29 references