The development and validation of a scale measuring global social power based on French and Raven's power taxonomy

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 targ et. A sample of 346 graduate students responded to a questionnaire assessin g their perceptions of the power of their supervising professors in paid as sistantship duties. Power was measured using established scales of the Fren ch and Raven 5 power bases in addition to the newly developed global power measure. Results indicate that the global power scale (a) has strong intern al consistency, (b) is significantly related to each of the 5 individual po wer bases, and (c) significantly accounts for additional variance in compli ance beyond the measures of the 5 power bases, beyond the sum of the bases, and beyond a measure of resistance and control.