The increasingly popular view of the counseling process from an interactional perspective necessitates the development of new measurement instruments which are suitable to the study of the reciprocal interaction between people. The validity of the Relational Communication Coding System, an instrument which operationalizes the constructs of complementarity and symmetry in human communication processes, was directly assessed in a two-factor design. Undergraduates (N=242) who were divided into 10 groups listened to one of five audiotaped interactions. Subjects were told that the persons on the tape were either a husband and wife or a counselor and client. Each interaction was loaded with one type of symmetrical or complementary communication pattern. The effects of pattern, context (marital versus counseling), and their interaction on subjects' perceptions of the relationship control were examined. The results revealed that interactions loaded with certain types of relational control patterns were reliably distinguished by outside observers. The context of the interaction was found to have little effect on how well observers' perceptions of relational control reflected the actual coded communication. These findings generally support the use of the Relational Communication Control Coding System in counseling process research. (NB)