Measuring the Working Alliance in Counselor Supervision

We developed the Supervisory Working Alliance Inventory (SWAI) to measure the relationship in counselor supervision. SWAI was based conceptually on the work of Greenson (1967) , Pepinsky and Patton (1971) , and others. Three supervisor factors (Client Focus, Rapport, and Identification) and two trainee factors (Rapport and Client Focus) were extracted by factor analysis. The scores on the SWAI were found to possess adequate scale reliability, and evidence of convergent and divergent validity for the SWAI was established by examining its relation to selected scales from the Supervisory Styles Inventory ( Friedlander & Ward, 1984 ). Trainee scores on the Rapport and Client Focus scales of the SWAI were significant predictors of scores on the Self-Efficacy Inventory ( Friedlander & Snyder, 1983 ). Implications for counselor training are discussed in the context of additional research on the psychometric properties of the SWAI.