Working Alliance Inventory – Short Revised (WAI-SR)

Instructions:  Below is a list of statements and questions about experiences people might have with their therapy or therapist.  Some items refer directly to your therapist with an underlined space -- as you read the sentences, mentally insert the name of your therapist in place of ______ in the text.  Think about your experience in therapy, and decide which category best describes your own experience.

IMPORTANT!  Please take your time to consider each question carefully.

1. As a result of these sessions I am clearer as to how I might be able to change.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

2. What I am doing in therapy gives me new ways of looking at my problem.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

3.  I believe___likes me.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

4. ___and I collaborate on setting goals for my therapy.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

5. ___and I respect each other.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

6. ___and I are working towards mutually agreed upon goals.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

7.  I feel that___appreciates me.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

8.  _____ and I agree on what is important for me to work on.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

9. I feel _____ cares about me even when I do things that he/she does not approve of.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

10.  I feel that the things I do in therapy will help me to accomplish the changes that I want.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

11. _____ and I have established a good understanding of the kind of changes that would be good for me.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

12. I believe the way we are working with my problem is correct.

Seldom 1 Sometimes 2 Fairly Often 3 Very Often 4 Always 5

Note: Items copyright © Adam Horvath.  Goal Items: 4, 6, 8, 11;

Task Items: 1, 2, 10, 12; Bond Items: 3, 5, 7, 9

I know this isn't exactly what you're asking, but I'm attaching an observer-based version of the WAI that we recently developed & that allows for analysis of in-session changes.

And here is an observer-based measured of alliance rupture events & resolution processes in case it may be of any use.

Thank you!

You're welcome.  Please let me know what you ultimately do & find.

There is also a WAI-O manual by the following, which I just came across, but you should probably contact Tim Anderson for a copy:

Andrew Darchuk, Victor Wang, David Weibel, Jennifer Fende, Timothy Anderson, Adam Horvath (2000). Manual for the Working Alliance Inventory – Observer Form (WAI-O): Revision IV. Department of Psychology, Ohio University.

Thanks so much. Yes, I did find the 2000 version (revision 4), and had some email exchange with Adam Horvath as well.

The difficulty we had in the study (called IMPACT) was that we are using both the self-report and the observer version of the WAI-S, and the self-report uses the 'old' rating system (low to high alliance), whereas the revision 4 manual uses a revised rating scheme (with 4 as no evidence, then going low/high direction for evidence of poor/strong alliance). This revised rating certainly makes good sense, but would mean that we'd not be able to make direct comparisons between the observer and self-rated versions (since the revised ratings haven't been made for the self-report version).

So we ended up using the 'old' rating system for both the self-report and the observer-version, for which we never found a rating manual using the 'old rating. However we looked at the rating manual for the original 36-item version, and used the relevant items from that. Fortunately we were able to achieve fairly good levels of inter-rater reliability, and have now coded over 200 sessions from our clinical trial (CBT vs STPP vs Specialist Clinical Care for youth depression) using that. Now just the little detail of analysing the data & writing it all up... ! Best wishes, Nick.

Sounds great, best wishes, Chris