Simplifying Relationship Science: Evaluating the Other in Self (OIS) Scale

At HINT, we're also interested in how relationships impact wellbeing and health outcomes. But quantifying something as complex as relationship closeness can be difficult. We all have intuitions about whether our relationships with friends, family members, coworkers, and romantic partners feel close or distant. However, psychology researchers have developed more objective tools to measure perceived closeness in relationships.

In a new comprehensive study published in PLOS One, researchers evaluated a simple pictorial scale called the Inclusion of Other in Self (OIS) as an efficient way to measure relationship closeness. We’ll summarize the research and discuss its relevance for understanding social relationships and health.

In three studies with a total of 772 diverse adult participants, the researchers compared IOS scores to longer established questionnaires for measuring relationship closeness.

In the OIS task, participants simply select which of 7 pairs of increasingly overlapping circles best represents their relationship with a person. The other questionnaires ask more detailed questions about time spent together, influence on each other, affection, and knowledge about the person.

Across the three studies, OIS scores were highly positively correlated with these longer measures of relationship closeness like the Relationship Closeness Inventory, the Loving and Liking scales, and the Personal Acquaintance Measure. (Posts for another time in the near future.)

The researchers then used principal component analysis to derive an Index of Relationship Closeness from the different established measures. This index correlated very strongly (ρ = .85) with scores on the simple pictorial IOS scale.

This suggests the OIS scale captures meaningful variance in perceived closeness of relationships, despite its brevity.

This comprehensive evaluation found the quick and portable OIS scale to be a highly reliable tool for measuring subjective closeness in relationships.

Its strong correlation with the Relationship Closeness Index indicates it taps into core aspects of perceived closeness, while only taking a minute to complete.

Understanding how to efficiently quantify relationship closeness has important implications for research on social relationships and health at Health Information Notes and Trends. We plan to follow up on how this simple scale may help deepen insights into how relationship closeness impacts wellbeing.

So, the next time you want to get an objective measure of your intuitive sense of relationship closeness, consider using the OIS scale for a fast and psychologically valid approach.