2021, Article / Letter to editor (British Journal of Social Work, vol. 00, (2021), pp. 1-27)Empowerment is seen as an important thinking and working framework for social
work. Ideally, it is possible to measure the empowering effects of social work.
However, various factors complicate measuring empowerment, making it a difficult
exercise. In past decades many instruments for measuring empowerment have been
developed and there are many variations in the way these instruments have been developed. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the available instruments, scales or questionnaires that intent to measure the empowerment
of users of social work in different contexts of social work, by means of a scoping review. A total of 2,711 studies were screened, resulting in 49 unique instruments for
measuring empowerment in contexts related to social work. The results show that the
found instruments are almost exclusively Patient-Reported Outcome Scales. Whilst
many instruments measure individual empowerment, only a few measure community
empowerment. The results also show that there are many variations in which instruments operationalise empowerment. This overview provides social work organisations
and its researchers an overview of measuring tools necessary to measure the effects
of their efforts, allowing them to build on what is available.