The Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Global Social Power Based on French and Raven's Power Taxonomy1

A measure of global power was developed based on French and Raven's (1959) definition of social power as the potential of an agent to influence a target. A sample of 346 graduate students responded to a questionnaire assessing their perceptions of the power of their supervising professors in paid assistantship duties. Power was measured using established scales of the French and Raven 5 power bases in addition to the newly developed global power measure. Results indicate that the global power scale (a) has strong internal consistency, (b) is significantly related to each of the 5 individual power bases, and (c) significantly accounts for additional variance in compliance beyond the measures of the 5 power bases, beyond the sum of the bases, and beyond a measure of resistance and control.

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