Goal Attainment Scaling in Early Childhood Intervention

Abstract

One of the problems about evaluations of outcomes of therapeutic services is the need for quantitative and/or qualitative measurement of attainment of intended goals that is sensitive to small changes over short periods. Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) was developed by Dr Tom Kiresuk and colleagues (in the United States) in the 1960s to address this issue. While there are many variations and applications of GAS in education and community services, there is little available literature on its application in the field of therapeutic interventions with visually impaired young children. The project described in this article entailed research on the efficacy of GAS in an evaluation of family-centred early intervention programs in an organisation focusing on young children with a vision impairment. It emerged that the preferred version of GAS was different in early intervention from the main applications of this instrument. In addition to the initial focus on GAS, was the need to develop a complementary global assessment measure. A repeated measures comparison of three intervention groups of visually impaired children showed a statistically significant effect, indicating that GAS was sufficiently clinically sensitive to detect small changes in individuals and small groups over several weeks of intervention and observation. Meanwhile, the qualitative data revealed a positive appreciation by all stakeholders of the opportunity for parents to become involved in goal setting and evaluation of their child's program.