How it works
The Relationship Closeness Inventory is a five-step questionnaire. It takes most people about ten to fifteen minutes. Your answers are combined into one closeness score shown as a percentage (0–100%), which corresponds to a 0–10 scale used in the original research tradition.
The four parts of your score
Each part captures a different facet of closeness. None of them alone defines a relationship; together they describe how embedded this person is in your week and your life.
1. Time together
You estimate how many hours in the past week you spent alone and awake with the other person. More shared time usually raises this component, though quality matters as much as quantity in real life.
2. Shared activities
You check off activities you did together in the past week from a fixed list (meals, errands, recreation, and similar). A wider variety of shared experiences contributes to this part of the score.
3. Influence on your life
You rate how much you agree that this person influences your moods, values, social plans, daily routines, and other domains. Some items are worded in reverse (“does not influence…”) so that careless agreeing does not inflate the score.
4. Future plans
You indicate how much this person affects your plans for vacations, career, housing, children, finances, and similar long-range goals.
How scoring works (in plain language)
Each of the four parts is converted to a comparable scale. Those four values are averaged and mapped to a 0–10 closeness mark, which the site displays as a percentage. You do not receive separate sub-scores on the results page, but your answers along each dimension all feed the single number you see.
Very low combined scores are adjusted slightly upward in the online version so that extremely sparse responses still produce a readable result. That tweak only affects the bottom of the range; it does not change high scores.
What higher and lower scores tend to mean
Higher scores usually mean you spend substantial time with this person, share many kinds of activities, feel them shaping day-to-day choices and moods, and picture them in your future plans.
Lower scores can mean a newer or more casual connection, a long-distance or busy season, a friendship that is warm but not entwined with daily life, or simply that you answered about someone you see often in groups but rarely one-on-one.
Context matters. A low score is not automatically “bad,” and a high score is not a guarantee of health or compatibility.
Research background and limits
The inventory follows ideas from Berscheid, Snyder, and Omoto (1989) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Their sample was 241 students at one university. Activity checklists mention classes, dorms, and campus social life. Online dating, remote work, and different family structures were not part of that world.
This website is an informal adaptation for self-reflection and entertainment. It is not a substitute for counseling, couples therapy, or any professional assessment. For more on those limits, see Limits of the inventory.