Couples Counseling Inventories and Tests

PAIR Couple Inventory (About $50.00)
David H. Olson & Mark T. Schaefer

Couples Counseling: The PAIR (Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships) Inventory is a 36 item instrument that assesses five types of intimacy: emotional, social, sexual, intellectual, and recreational. It enables a person to describe their own relationship as they perceive and experience it. It can be used for a variety of relationships from friendship to marriage.

PAIR can be used for all types of dyadic relationships including friendships, dating, premarital, cohabiting, and marriage relationships. It is being used as a couple assessment tool in premarital and marriage counseling, as well as a feedback instrument in couple enrichment programs.

PAIR measures several kinds of intimacy that a couple may experience: emotional intimacy, social intimacy, sexual intimacy, recreational intimacy, and intellectual intimacy. PAIR measures both the perceived (36 items) and expected (36 items) levels of intimacy in that relationship. The discrepancy between the “perceived-expected” descriptions provides an assessment of their satisfaction in each of these areas. It can also provide directions and goals for couples in either therapy or enrichment programs.

PAIR has been systematically developed so that it will provide reliable and valid information about a couple. A conventionality scale has been included to indicate how much individuals attempt to “fake good.”

The advantage of using PAIR (vs. PREPARE/ENRICH) is that you only have to purchase it once. Then you can receive permission to reproduce your own copies for each couple that you counsel. Also, PAIR is a self-scored inventory that can be scored in a matter of minutes.

The PAIR Packet includes:

• PAIR Manual
• 2 PAIR Item Booklets
• PAIR Administration and Scoring Booklet
• 2 PAIR journal articles
• Abstract Form

Prepare/Enrich
This test is for premarital and marital couples. It explores the strengths and the growth areas of their relationship. It also allows a couple to discuss family-of-origin issues, helps them to make financial plans, develop couple and personal goals and strengthen communication skills and learn how to resolve conflict.

Other variations of this test are as follows – Prepare MC is for pre-marital couples with children. Prepare CC is for cohabiting couples. Prepare Enrich is for married couples and Prepare MATE is for couples over 50 years old that are considering marriage / re-marriage or a significant life transition.

ENRICH Couple Scales (About $50.00)
David H. Olson, David G. Fournier, and Joan M. Druckman

ENRICH contains three 10-item subscales that can be used for research including Marital Satisfaction, Communication, and Conflict Resolution. There is also a seven item Idealistic Distortion Scale.

The Marital Satisfaction scale provides a global measure of satisfaction by surveying ten areas of the couple’s marriage. These areas include the major categories in ENRICH: i.e. personality, role responsibilities, communication, conflict resolution, financial concerns, management of leisure time, sexual relationship, parental responsibilities, relationships with family and friends, and religious orientation.

The Communication scale is concerned with an individual’s feelings, beliefs, and attitudes about the communication in his/her relationship. Items focus on the level of comfort felt by both partners in being able to share important emotions and beliefs with each other, the perception of a partner’s way of giving and receiving information, and the respondent’s perception of how adequately she/he communicates with partner.

The Conflict Resolution scale assesses an individual’s attitudes, feelings and beliefs toward the existence and resolution of conflict in his/her relationship. Items focus on the openness of partners to recognize and resolve issues, the strategies and procedures used to end arguments, and their satisfaction with the way problems are resolved.

The Idealistic Distortion scale measures the extent to which the person is being optimistic, realistic or pessimistic in answering the questions. This scale can be a useful reference point in understanding the perceptual biases of a person. Premarital couples tend to be overly optimistic in describing their relationship, while unhappy couples tend to be overly pessimistic and married couples tend to be more realistic.

ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale (About $30.00)
David H. Olson

This is a 17 item scale with 10 items on satisfaction and 7 items on idealism.

The Marital Satisfaction scale provides a global measure of satisfaction by surveying ten areas of the couple’s marriage. These areas include the major categories in ENRICH: i.e. communication, conflict resolution, roles, financial concerns, leisure time, sexual relationship, parenting, family and friends, and religion.

The Idealistic Distortion scale measures the extent to which the person is being optimistic, realistic or pessimistic in answering the questions. This scale can be a useful reference point in understanding the perceptual biases of a person. Premarital couples tend to be overly optimistc in describing their relationship, while unhappy couples tend to be overly pessimistic and married couples tend to be more realistic.

Fowers, B.J. & Olson, D.H. (1993) ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale.
Journal of Family Psychology Vol. 7, No. 2, 176-185

Clinical Rating Scale (About $30.00)
David H. Olson and Elinor Killorin

The Clinical Rating Scale is an instrument that is designed primarily for use by therapists. It can be used to rate the family’s behavior on the dimensions of cohesion, adaptability (flexibility), and communication. It is then possible to assess location of the couple or family on the Circumplex Model.

Taylor Johnson Temperament Analysis
The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis (T-JTA), an assessment from Pearson Assessments, measures personality traits that affect an individual’s personal and interpersonal adjustment. The T-JTA can be used for individual counseling, and with its unique “criss-cross” feature, it is ideal for counseling couples. The T-JTA profiles are designed to help counselors quickly identify problem areas. The instrument can help individuals better understand themselves and to compare their self-portraits with the perceptions of their spouse.

 

Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Referenced by Everett Worthington in Hope-Focused Marriage Counseling)

By: Graham Spanier

The Dyadic Adjustment Scale is 32 item self-report measure of relationship adjustment. Four factors are reported: Dyadic Satisfaction; Dyadic Consensus; Dyadic Cohesion and Affectional Expression. Normative data is provided for married and recently divorced couples.

The scale has good reliability and has been used in many research studies with a wide variety of couples, indicating good validity. Features include:

• Brief measure – quickly completed by clients.
• Wide variety of uses from couples counselling, effectiveness of therapy, at risk assessments, co-morbidity, etc.

Reports: The DAS may be hand or computer scored. Computer scoring and report generation can be completed on-site using the PsychManager software or through our Scoring Bureau’s mail/fax-in service.

Two computer generated reports are available. The Profile Report prints out a graph of an individual’s scores. The Integrated Report provides a graph of results for both members of a relationship.

1. DAS Profile Report.
2. DAS Integrated Report.

Other Inventories For Couples Counseling

 

Beck Depression Inventory
Do you think you are suffering from depression? This is a quick, inexpensive, self-score test that measures the attitudes and symptoms of depression to determine the extent of the depression.

State Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI)
Are you or someone you know dealing with a lot of uncontrolled anger? This test explores how a person experiences and expresses anger. It is a straightforward, brief test with 44 questions and five main scales.

Trauma Symptom Inventory
This is a 100 question test evaluating Post-traumatic Stress symptoms resulting from rape, assault, natural disasters, abuse and other personal tragedies in an individual’s life. This tool measures the extent to which an individual is experiencing trauma.

If you are looking for a licensed professional couples counselor, consider contacting Thrive Boston Counseling at 617-395-5806.  or mail 872 Massachusetts Ave, Ste 2-2, Cambridge, MA 02139