Shapiro Control Inventory (SCI) Manual

An Overview

The Shapiro Control (SCI) provides 9 scale, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional Control Profile of an individual. The goal of the SCI is to help build a bridge between research, theory, and clinical practice, providing a sophisticated and comprehensive Control Profile that can be used in clinical practice and for research purposes. By providing a unique Control Profile of an individual, the SCI helps the therapist in subsequent “matching” of control enhancing strategies tailored to each client. The SCI takes approximately 20 minutes to take and is understandable by those with at least an 8th grade education.

The SCI provides a report which covers four major content areas:

Sense of Control includes three sense of control scales in the general domain; and one domain-specific sense of control scale which includes twenty-five specific parameters of control and self-control (Scales 1-4).
Modes of Control involves four scales reflecting four characteristic cognitive and/or behavioral styles of responding to control-related issues: positive assertive; positive yielding; negative assertive; and negative yielding (Scales 5-8).
Motivation for Control contains a desire for control scale (Scale 9); ;as well as information on mode and parameter satisfaction, overcontrol issues, and preferences (assertive/change; yielding/acceptance) for dealing with domain-specific parameters of concern regarding control.
Agency of Control provides information on the sources of a person's sense of control (including self, others, and beliefs about the nature of the universe).

The Shapiro Control Inventory Manual summarizes fifteen years of programmatic research on the Shapiro Control Inventory (SCI) consisting of extensive reliability and validity studies, including content analysis of psychotherapy speech samples, neurobiological correlates of the modes of control and sense of control using Positron Emission Tomography, and control profiles of normal and other populations: depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, borderline personality, eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia); adult children of alcoholics, those at high risk for cardiovascular disease, type A individuals with myocardial infarction, and women with breast cancer. Research shows that this method of assessing client Control Profiles has both sensitivity and specificity to differentiate among clinical disorders and between clinical and normative populations.

The Shapiro Control Inventory (SCI) Manual

Download the PDF version of SCI Manual.

Supplimental Information

Download the PDF version of SCI Scoring Key.

Frequently Asked Questions on the SCI

The SCI has been adapted to different languages and has been applied in different countries related to multiple topics. For a listing of topics, languages and countries, please click here.

Please click here for a one paragraph example from an article by Galego et al (2017):

p. 3 The Shapiro Control Inventory, hereafter SCI (Shapiro, 1994) provides a multidimensional profile on the psychological construct of control. To this end, it provides information on what is the specific problem of the person related with control, identifies what style of control should be used to deal with the problem, and defines where specific deficits on control exist. This information helps to focus control-related aspects to which a psychotherapeutic intervention should be directed. (Shapiro and Astin l998; Shapiro, Shapiro, D, Soucar, B., Shapiro, S.L, Astin, 2009. In recent years SCI has been adapted to different languages and has been applied in different countries and contexts with the purpose of analyzing problems related to eating behavior disorders in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Jerusalem (Sing, Chang, Kwok & Hsu, 2004; Surgenor, Horn & Hudson, 2003), the consumption of alcohol in New Zealand and the United Kingdom (Sepehri & Miles, 2010; Surgenor, Horn, Hudson, Adamson & Robertson, 2006), breast cancer in Arizona (Shapiro, Figuerero, Caspi, Schwartz, Bootzin, Lopez & Lake, 2002), cultural differences between the Chinese and American population (Chia Cheng & Chuang, 1998), the prison population in Spain (Santibáñez, 1994), anxiety disorders in Argentina (Bogiaizian, 2004) and professionals in the field of public health (Shapiro, Astin, Shapiro, Robitshek & Shapiro, 2011).

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