"Client Ratings
The most widely used client-rated measure of empathy is the empathy scale of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory:
Other to Self (OS) version (B-LRI: Form-OS), although other client rating measures have also been developed (e.g., Saunders, Howard & Orlinsky, 1989) as well.
Rogers (1957) hypothesized that clients’ perceptions of therapists’ facilitative conditions (unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruence) predict therapeutic outcome. Accordingly, the B-LRI, which measures clients’ perceptions, is an operational definition of Rogers’ hypothesis.
In several earlier reviews, including our previous meta-analyses in Psychotherapy Relationships That Work (Norcross, 2001, 2011), client-perceived empathy predicted outcome better than observer- or therapist-rated empathy (Barrett-Lennard, 1981; Gurman, 1977; Elliott et al., 2011; Orlinsky, et al., 2003). "