An empirical test of a self-care model of women's responses to battering.

A model of women's responses to battering was constructed based on Orem's theory of self-care deficit and on empirical and clinical observations. The model proposed that the age, educational level, and cultural influences as basic conditioning factors would all be directly related to relational conflict, which would be negatively related to self-care agency (as a mediator) and indirectly related to both outcomes of health and well-being. Using simultaneous structural equation modeling with specification searching, a modified model was derived that eliminated the mediation path but supported direct effects of both abuse and self-care agency on health. The derived model was found to be only a borderline fit with the data, probably due to measurement problems, lack of inclusion of important variables, and small sample size (N = 117). However, there was support for several of the relationships deduced from and/or congruent with Orem's theory.