Date Awarded

1992

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Department

Education

Abstract

The problem of most shelters is that they have very limited resources. In addition, space is at a premium in most shelters. Optimum employment of these limited resources is paramount. Since leaving the abusive relationship appears to be a process, it would be extremely useful to shelter managers and counselors alike if there were a way to ascertain which women were ready to leave the abusive relationship and which women were not.;Using the scales of Dominance, Independence, and Feminine/Masculine from the California Psychological Inventory - Revised (CPI-R), the scales of Emotional Coping, Behavioral Coping, and Naive Optimism from the Constructive Thinking Inventory, the Thinking/Feeling Preference from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the demographic variable of "times previously separated," a study was conducted to see if distinctive patterns would arise between those women who chose to return to the abuser and those women who chose not to return to the abuser.;Fifty shelter residents were asked to participate by completing three inventories and a demographic information sheet.;T-tests were used to analyze the data.;The first hypothesis was that women who preferred the Feeling function in their Myers-Briggs Type Indicator would return to the abuser to a greater degree than those who preferred the Thinking function. This hypothesis was not supported.;The second hypothesis was that women who did not return to the abuser would score significantly higher on the California Psychological Inventory - Revised scales of Dominance and Independence and lower on the Femininity/Masculinity scale. This hypothesis was not supported.;The third hypothesis was that women who chose not to return to the abusive relationship would score significantly higher on the scales of Emotional Coping and Behavioral Coping and lower on the scale of Naive Optimism. The hypothesis was supported for the scales of Emotional and Behavioral Coping and rejected for the scale of Naive Optimism.;The fourth hypothesis was that women who had previously separated from their partners zero, one, or two times would return to a significantly greater degree than those who had previously separated three or more times. This hypothesis was not supported.;This research was based upon the multimodal theory of Arnold Lazarus. Findings indicated that the decision to return or not return was a decision impacted by a combination of many variables unique to the individual woman.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.25774/w4-s9ag-vw14

Rights

© The Author

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