ABSTRACT
Assessing and reporting on the validity of Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) is an enterprise that has lagged considerably behind the spread of this popular technique (Cytrynbaum, Ginath, Birdwell, & Brandt, 1979). In an earlier comprehensive bibliography on GAS in mental health (Crabbe, Choate, Cardillo, & Smith, 1981), only 31 of 176 entries either contributed original data on the validity of GAS or provided more than perfunctory discussion of its validity. Relatively few of those 31 bibliographic entries were for articles in nationally known, peer reviewed journals; many others appeared in a publication of the developers, the Goal Attainment Review. The modest number of publications and reports that did furnish original data on validity were based on studies that varied markedly both in quality and in basic assumptions about what constitutes GAS. This chapter provides a critical appraisal of the available validity data on GAS, including an analysis of the effectiveness of the approaches taken, consideration of alternative explanations of the results, and, finally, some sense of what can be concluded from the data that sometimes appear inconsistent.
