Relationship Assessment

Understanding Relationships and Mental Health

A healthy and fulfilling relationship has a huge positive influence on both mental and physical well-being. However, if a relationship becomes strained, it can start to take a toll on mental health, potentially leading or contributing to conditions like depression and anxiety.^[1]

External stressors such as trouble at work, financial difficulties, or unresolved trauma can contribute to low relationship satisfaction.^[2,3] On the other hand, poor communication, mismatched expectations, or a lack of trust or intimacy could place excess strain on a relationship, which then might spill over into other aspects of your life.

This feedback loop can intensify the negative effects of issues that arise within and outside a relationship. 

Assessing a Relationship

It’s difficult to reduce the health of a relationship to a simple number. What’s important in one person’s relationship might not be the same for everyone, and ways of expressing intimacy and trust vary across cultures.^[3]

With these limitations in mind, researchers have developed several scales for assessing relationship satisfaction, which have served as predictors of how long relationships will last, and whether it’s time to seek outside help, such as therapy or counselling. They have also helped to map out how the health of a relationship relates to mental and physical wellbeing.^[3,4]

The Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS) is used widely across the world in many languages and cultures. You can take the assessment below, and once complete, we’ll give you some feedback and advice based on your score. You can also record your score and take the assessment again later to see how it changes over time.

Come back and track your progress

• This test can be used as a tool to track the health of your relationship and monitor how it changes over time.

Disclaimer

This is a subjective test that provides a general assessment of your relationship satisfaction. It cannot accurately predict whether a relationship will last or diagnose particular faults. The score provided is not an objective valuation of your relationship, but can be used to determine whether it’s a good time to seek further resources, advice, or counselling. It is also important to be aware of signs of abuse:

• Signs of an abusive relationship include our partner constantly needing to know where we are and who we’re hanging out with, checking our phone without permission, keeping us away from friends or family, preventing access to money, threats of violence, physical abuse, sexual assault or coercion. 

Though it doesn’t get spoken about much, men can be victims of domestic abuse too – in both queer and heterosexual relationships. Abusive relationships are more common than we may think. More information on what abuse and domestic violence looks. 

Privacy

The Relationship Assessment Scale survey is anonymous and no personally identifying information is required. It includes an opt-in demographic section that helps inform our understanding of our visitors and the development of our content.

Contact information for our email newsletter (if you choose to opt-in) and your RAS responses are stored separately. See our terms, privacy, and conditions for more information.

References

1. Yucel, D. (2017). The dyadic nature of relationships: Relationship satisfaction among married and cohabiting couples. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 13(1), 37–58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-017-9505-z
2. Adamczyk, K., Kleka, P., & Frydrychowicz, M. (2022). Psychometric functioning, measurement invariance, and external associations of the Relationship Assessment Scale in a sample of Polish Adults. Scientific reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26653-6
3. Tai, T., Baxter, J., & Hewitt, B. (2014). Do co-residence and intentions make a difference? relationship satisfaction in married, cohabiting, and living apart together couples in four countries. Demographic Research, 31, 71-103. doi:https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2014.31.3
4. Gere, J., & MacDonald, G. (2012). Assessing relationship quality across cultures: An examination of measurement equivalence. Personal Relationships, 20(3), 422–442. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12001