Assessing readiness to work from a stages of change perspective: implications for return to work.

The Lam Assessment on Stages of Employment Readiness (LASER) was developed to assess welfare recipients' employment readiness. The LASER consists of 14 items corresponding to Prochaska's stages of change model (Prochaska, DiClemente and Norcross, 1992). A sample of 149 welfare recipients from a work training program participated in the study.