ABSTRACT
William M.M. Levack, Sarah G. Dean, Kathryn M. McPherson and Richard J. Siegert
It is not surprising that goal setting has become so dominant within the practice of clinical rehabilitation. Goal setting is an inherently attractive concept, appearing deceptively simple at first and belying the complex relationships that exist between goals, personality, motivation, mood, self-regulation and other types of cognition. As well as having a long history of influence in psychology and philosophy, the language of goals and goal setting has also become firmly embedded within popular culture and, in particular, within the self-development movement. For instance, one of Covey’s (1989) ‘seven habits of highly effective people’ is to ‘begin with the end in mind’ (p. 95) – in essence, to start by identifying one’s life goals before making decisions about what actions need to be undertaken in order to progress towards them. Thus, goal setting is a concept that will
CONTENTS
2.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 21 2.2 Enthusiasm versus Evidence: The Risk of Confirmation Bias.......................................23 2.3 Conducting a Fair Test of the Effectiveness of Goal Setting
in Rehabilitation Contexts .................................................................................................. 26 2.4 Difficulties with Designing the Perfect Experimental Study of Goal
Setting in Rehabilitation ..................................................................................................... 27 2.4.1 Problems with Operationalizing the Treatment Approach ...............................28 2.4.2 Problems with Defining a Control Group ............................................................ 31 2.4.3 Problems with Blinding .......................................................................................... 32 2.4.4 Problems with Cross-Group Contamination .......................................................33 2.4.5 Problems with Intervention Fidelity .....................................................................35 2.4.6 Problems Arising from Goal Setting Being Primarily Used
to Augment Therapy ...............................................................................................35 2.4.7 Problems Arising from Not Evaluating Goal Commitment .............................36 2.4.8 Consideration of the Group Context of Goal Setting
in Interprofessional Rehabilitation ........................................................................ 37 2.5 Some Principles for Future Research on Goal Setting in Rehabilitation .....................38 2.6 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 39 References .......................................................................................................................................40
