Goal attainment scaling: reliability and practical experiences with 397 psychiatric treatment courses. Part 1: Evaluation of validity and reliability
Bolm, W.
Zeitschrift für Klinische Psychologie Psychopathologie und Psychotherapie 42(2): 128-138
1994
ISSN/ISBN: 0723-6557 PMID: 7941637 Document Number: 428581
Standardized outcome measures are often criticized, individualized criteria being preferred. Goal attainment scaling (GAS) is such an individual evaluation tool. It aims at measuring, whether a patient attains, what is thought to be his potential. For 36 psychiatric patients outcome estimated by GAS was compared with traditional outcome-measures ("Brief psychiatric rating scale", BPRS, "Clinical global impression", CGI, outcome-scales of Strauss and Carpenter and a patient self-rating. Concurrent validity was sufficient, compared to BPRS, CGI and the scale "absence of symptoms". The other scales of Strauss and Carpenter and the patient self-rating did not correlate closely with GAS. Traditional interraterreliability was sufficient, but if two raters constructed separate scales for one patient, their GAS scores correlated weakly. GAS is recommended for further study in spite of its obvious shortcommings: there seems to be no other way of quantifying, to what degree a patient realized his individual potential.