ABSTRACT
The Relational Communication Scale (RCS) has been used to study relational messages in several communication contexts. The original RCS included a series of Likert items and tapped the participant's perceptions of relational messages communicated by a conversational partner. Observer ratings of the relational messages sent by the confederate and participants showed similar patterns of reciprocal communication. To corroborate the proposed schema and construct a measure that more thoroughly captured relational message themes, Burgoon and Hale created the RCS. More generally, the RCS was used in studies of physician-patient interaction, marital satisfaction, computer-mediated interaction, and relational development. With minor modifications, RCS items can be used as a self-report of relational communication. Scores on items measuring each dimension of the RCS should therefore be summed after reflecting or reverse scoring negatively worded items and then divided by the number of items.
