Start delivering measurement based mental health care
Conduct psychological assessments remotely, get scores automatically, and maintain clinical records securely
Create account
The Agnew Relationship Measure - 5 (ARM-5) is a 5-item self-report measure designed to assess the client- therapist alliance. The ARM-5 is a short form version of the original 28-item ARM. It includes five items from three of the ARM’s five scales, Bond, Partnership, and Confidence.
You can create a free account on PsyPack to access fillable PDFs, manuals and educational resources for the ARM-5 (Client Version)
The ARM-5 comprises 5 sentences describing the client, the therapist, and the client-therapist relationship, rated using 7-point scale (1 to 7) anchored from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".
This scale's item number 3 is is loaded negatively.
ARM-5 Score is calculated as mean of the constituent item ratings, after reversing the scoring for items that loaded negatively.
Means, Standard Deviations, and Internal Consistency for client version of the ARM-5
| Source | Mean | SD | Alpha |
|---|---|---|---|
Leeds Depression Research Clinic (n = 359-374 sessions) | 6.38 | 0.74 | 0.79 |
Second Sheffield Psychotherapy Project (n = 1073 to 1105 sessions) | 5.76 | 0.91 | 0.82 |
Kingston Study sample (n = 286 sessions) | 6.81 | 0.41 | 0.64 |
PsyPack can automatically score the ARM-5 (Client Version) assessment and prepare corresponding tables and graphs.
Further, PsyPack automatically plots a graph to help you easily track progress over time.
Client-Therapist Alliance
The purpose of the evaluation is to:
Self-administered
Positive psychology
Questionnaire
18 years and above
About 2 minutes
Since the questionnaire relies on client self-report, all responses should be verified by the practitioner, and a definitive analysis is made taking into account how well the client understood the questionnaire, as well as other relevant information from the client. As is true of any self-report instrument, respondents can consciously distort their response to the scale if they are motivated to do so.
ARM-5 was intended as a very short index of the core alliance construct that could be used to track alliance in busy practice settings as a clinical decision tool. For example, feedback to participants on the status of their alliance might signaling alliance ruptures in time to facilitate their repair, just as feedback on clients’ progress on symptom intensity measures results in improved outcomes, particularly for clients who have a poor initial response to treatment .
Cahill J, Stiles WB, Barkham M, Hardy GE, Stone G, Agnew-Davies R, Unsworth G. Two short forms of the Agnew Relationship Measure: the ARM-5 and ARM-12. Psychother Res. 2012;22(3):241-55. doi: 10.1080/10503307.2011.643253. Epub 2011 Dec 22. PMID: 22191469.