Empathic Understanding Scale of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI).
Empathic Understanding in Interpersonal Processes Scale, the empathy subtest of the Barrett-Lennard (1962) Relationship Inventory
MEASURING THE RELATIONSHIP CONDITIONS IN PERSON-CENTRED AND EXPERIENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPIES
1. Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI) In 1956, Barrett-Lennard was a graduate student at the Counseling Center of the University of Chicago looking for a topic for his doctoral thesis, when Rogers first circulated his theoretical formulation of the relationship conditions (one year before its publication). For his doctoral research, Barrett-Lennard decided to test Rogers‘ theory with actual clients in therapy (Barrett-Lennard, 1959). However, there were yet no measures of the therapist-to-client relationship conditions and then BarrettLennard had to ‘invent them from the ground up’ (Barrett-Lennard, 2002, p. 65). Barrett-Lennard reasoned that the relationship ‘as experienced by the client would be most crucially related to the outcome of therapy’ (Barrett-Lennard, 2002, p. 67). Consequently, he decided to focus his instrument on the client’s perceptions of the therapist’s attitudes in the relationship, supplemented by the therapist’s views of his/ her own responses.
The Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI): current and potential uses with family systems.
"The search for and measurement of important relationship qualities have always been of interest to family therapists. Within a Rogerian perspective, empathy, regard, and congruence are believed to be among the most important indicators of the quality of human relationships. These variables, or conceptually similar ones, are also important in several current models of family functioning.
Barrett-Lennard (1,2) developed an instrument, the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI), to measure empathy, regard, and congruence. Although the major use of the BLRI has been in psychotherapy outcome research (13), several studies have shown that it is a sensitive indicator of marital satisfaction and of changes occurring in marital-improvement programs. "
"A frequently used measure of empathy derived from the client’s, perspective is the empathy subscale of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory or B.L.R.I. (1962). The empathy subtest of the B.L.R.I. is a 16-item 6 point questionnaire rating scale, which may be used for self-rating or rating by clients." (BRINK 1991)
Attunement as the Core of Therapist-Expressed Empathy
Canadian Journal of Counselling / 2007, Vol. 41:4
Helen L. Macaulay
Shaké G. Toukmanian
Kimberley M. Gordon
"The Empathic Understanding Scale of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI). Barrett-Lennard’s (1986) measure was used to assess “expressed empathy,” as conceptualized in his relational empathy model (1981). It consists of 16 items, each rated on a 6-choice anchored scale, and worded for clients, therapists, or, as in this study, use by a third-party observer/judge. The scale has shown to have acceptable levels of content and predictive validity, and most internal consistency and test-retest reliabilities have been in the range of .75 to .95 (Barrett-Lennard, 1986, 1998). In this study the inter-rater reliability was .97. "