Counselors' Adjective Correlates of Working Alliance

Abstract

The authors present a study of 85 counselors' adjective descriptors of clients in relation to a working alliance. The imperative for such a study emerges from Gough's 1965 Conceptual Analysis of Test Scores approach to clinical measurement. For this investigation, all 300 items of the Adjective Check List were used. Working alliance was measured by the counselor's form of the Working Alliance Inventory-Short. Point biserial correlation of each adjective with inventory scores produced 54 significant adjectives. These 54 adjectives were 18 times the number expected by chance.