This very well structured paper provides a succinct and user friendly guide to Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS). It highlights the challenges of outcome measurement within brain injury especially at the level of participation and puts GAS into context with the traditional goal setting process within rehabilitation.
The GAS is described along with its history and development. This includes some reference to its advantages and disadvantages. The scoring system is very clearly explained along with a statistical formula for calculating an ‘overall GAS score’. This can look rather daunting for the ‘mathematically challenged’ but helpful links are given to an electronic tool to facilitate its application.
The process of applying GAS is explained in a very systematic, step by step manner and the inclusion of the author’s ‘workplace experiences’ helps to convince the reader that this is a feasible system to use in practice. A worked example further consolidates understanding of the process. Finally a ‘practical tips’ section provides very pragmatic advice for application of GAS such as focusing primarily on documenting the key goal at the outset of rehabilitation rather than necessarily having all items of the scale established at the end of the assessment. The reader is advised that the ‘worse than expected’ and ‘better than expected’ levels will often become apparent during the rehabilitation process as long as the main goal is identified.
This article very much lives up to its title and is extremely useful reading for clinicians considering or already using GAS.
