Abstract
The German version of the Working Alliance Inventory – Short Revised (WAI-SR) – A pantheoretic, economic, and empirically validated instrument to assess the therapeutic alliance Therapeutic alliance encompasses the goal oriented cooperation of patients and therapists. It is an important factor which is clearly related to the success of psychotherapy. German questionnaires to measure therapeutic alliance are rare and most often not empirically validated. The Working Alliance Inventory assesses the three factors of Bordin’s pantheoretic model of alliance: Bond, Tasks and Goals. A revised short version has been published recently (WAI-SR) with three scales of four items each. This study describes the German adaptation of the WAI-SR. The data (N = 331) were collected in a hospital for psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy (N = 173), a rehabilitation clinic for psychotherapy (N = 70) and an outpatient psychotherapy clinic (N = 88). The inpatients were treated with an integrative psychodynamic approach, the outpatients received cognitive behavior therapy. The analyses are based on data from the beginning of the therapies. The WAI-SR shows good internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha of the subscales .81 to .91). Results of the confirmatory factor analysis show an acceptable to good model fit in inpatients and outpatients. Results correspond to the empirical investigation of the American original version of the questionnaire. Expected high correlations with the subscale Relationship Satisfaction of the Helping Alliance Questionnaire (HAQ) strengthen the convergent validity of the WAI-SR. The WAI-SR has advantages compared to other scales as it has a clear theoretical foundation, is economic and has good psychometric properties. The WAI-SR may be used irrespective of the theoretical orientation of a psychotherapeutic approach.
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