The Impact Message Inventory: A new measure of relationship in counseling/psychotherapy and other dyads.

Abstract

The Impact Message Inventory assesses momentary emotional and other engagements of one person by another during ongoing transactions in counseling/psychotherapy and other dyads. A 259-item form of the inventory was administered to 451 undergraduates of both sexes. Fifteen groups of approximately 30 subjects each recorded their impacts to 1 of 15 paragraph descriptions of stylistically pure interpersonal types adapted from Lorr and McNair's Interpersonal Behavior Inventory items. Item and factor-analytic procedures, cross-validated on split samples, yielded an 82-item revised inventory of high internal consistency reliability. Results offer strong support for circumplex ordering of the inventory's 15 interpersonal subscales, whereas inconsistent support is found for the prediction that impact messages occupy a two-factor space around the axes of status and affiliation. Applications of the inventory in counseling/psychotherapy research and practice are discussed. In counseling theory and research, relationship has remained a controversial and elusive construct. What has been missing is a relevant measure tied to a systematic and comprehensive theory. This report presents the development and initial validation of an inventory designed to assess relationship behaviors in dyads, including counselor-client and husband-wife, as well as pairs of interactants in other social contexts. The Impact Message Inventory (Kiesler et al., 1975, 1976) taps the momentary affective, cognitive, and behavioral covert engagements of one person by another during ongoing face-to-face communication. The inventory shows promise for single-case and group studies of counseling practice and for counselor training and supervision. It can be used as a dependent variable measure by which the counselor, observers, and significant others in the client's life record their sequential impact responses to the client over the course of counseling and follow-up periods. In marital counseling it can serve as a repeated measure filled out by each partner on the other and also can be in