REFLECTIONS ON GOAL ATTAINMENT SCALING (GAS) - CAUTIONARY NOTES AND PROPOSALS FOR DEVELOPMENT

Goal attainment scaling (GAS) is a technique for evaluating the succes s with which services help their clients to attain the personal goals that have been set for them. Evaluators who use the technique construc t a five-point scale around each goal that is set for the individual c lients who use a service. Clients' outcome levels are converted into s tandard scores which are scaled to a mean of 50 and a standard deviati on of 10. The technique has been in widespread use in education, healt h and social work in the USA since 1968, but its use elsewhere has bee n relatively uncommon. This paper suggests that there are problems abo ut the calculation of standard scores in GAS, first, because the stati stic is not dealing with interval data, and secondly, because of diffi culties in estimating the degree of relationship among the scores of i ndividual clients. However, the paper proposes non-parametric methods of handling the data, and commends the practice of goal-setting and go al-monitoring as a process for developing services.