Relationship Grid Survey
​written by Susan Connor, Research Associate
​

Background

Within personality psychology there is a stream of theory and research that focuses on describing or assessing interpersonal behavior on two dimensions, often referred to as agency and communion. Timothy Leary (1957) was the first to place the dimensions on a circumplex, with the horizontal axis representing communion (also often called affiliation) and the vertical axis representing agency (sometimes referred to as power). Variations on the circumplex have appeared over the years, with the poles of agency generally called dominance/submission and the poles of communion referred to as hostility/friendliness, coldness/warmth, or hate/love. 

Various questionnaires for assessing people on the circumplex have been devised, most with good internal and test-retest validity as well as external validity with self-report personality measures and clinical outcomes (Locke, 2006). All of the measures have been criticized as well for various shortcomings, including language that may be outmoded, lack of consistency for some quadrants (specifically the top right and bottom left) and overlap between extreme ends of the poles.

Independently of the extensive theorizing and research that has developed over the past five decades, Terry Real (2007) created something similar to the circumplex, which he calls the Relationship Grid. In his clinical experience Real found that people tend to fall into one of four quadrants in their behavior during relationship difficulties. The labels (and extreme behaviors) for these quadrants can be seen in the diagram below. Developed from clinical experience, rather than theoretical or philosophical underpinnings, the Relationship Grid may prove to have more clinical utility than the circumplex, particularly for couples therapists.  

A survey assessing individuals’ place on the Relationship Grid and helping respondents identify their primary maladaptive relationship style has been available through the RLT website and distributed through social media channels for some time. In order to assess the potential utility of the Grid, we are pursuing research to 1) formalize construction of a questionnaire (RL-Grid) that samples behavior expected at the extremes of both major poles, as well as behavior that would be expected in each quadrant, and 2) to gather validity and reliability data on the questionnaire. Construct validity is the extent to which a survey measures the theoretical construct it is intended to measure. Reliability measures consistency of results from individual to individual surveyed, across settings and at different times. Our first step in this line of research is to measure survey validity; survey reliability will be assessed only after we are assured of the validity of the Relationship Grid.

Since January 2023, we have been assessing internal validity of the scale and subscales. Using 2,944 survey responses received through various social media channels, we calculated Chronbach’s alpha values for the overall survey and the four subscales (walled off and one up, walled off and one down, boundaryless and one up, and boundaryless and one down). Cronbach’s alpha indicates the internal consistency among groups of items in different categories; items need to be highly correlated if they are to validly represent a given category. Based on exploration of Chronbach’s alpha results and correlation grids, the team undertook a revamping of the survey tool to maximize internal consistency, identify negative correlations across quadrants, and measure extremes of both major poles. A test run of a revised survey in February 2023 provided 669 survey responses which were analyzed to determine differences between the two versions of the survey. While internal consistency for both versions of the survey tested in the ‘acceptable’ range, we are continuing the survey development process to create a version of the survey that maximizes internal consistency across grids. Large numbers of survey responses can be obtained over a short period of time, facilitating this research strategy and providing a large body of data with a geographically diverse group of respondents. We anticipate having a finalized version of the grid survey with maximized internal validity supported by the data by the end of June 2023.

Once the survey is finalized, we will move on to next steps. First, assessing external validity through various measures, including by having partners assess each other. We will also explore validity of the RLT grid in relationship to other measures of interpersonal problems, such as the Interpersonal Problems Circumplex scales (IIP-C) and existing validated measures of narcissism, self-compassion, and difficulties in emotional regulation. Reliability will be assessed by engaging a subset of respondents to re-test at one month and comparing results. The availability of large amounts of data from respondents in different geographic regions will also allow us to test reliability of the grid measure across cultures, including assessment of gender subgroups within different countries and geographic regions. 

Grid survey research is expected to continue through the end of 2023, at which time we will prepare a report describing the stages of Relationship Grid survey development and testing which will be shared with the board and with RLT instructors. The report will also serve as the basis for one or more published papers to advance the evidence base for RLT.