ABSTRACT
Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) is one of a large variety of evaluative methods that attempt to elicit and determine tangible expectations that are the presumed results of certain activities or actions. The most general definition would include almost any form of forecasting and hypothesis testing. Practically speaking, however, the concept is manifested in goal-setting techniques that are widely used in industry, education, and many other forms of human service delivery. Many of these techniques probably arose spontaneously, perhaps because of the self-evident nature of the basic assumptions. GAS, on the other hand, can probably be traced to ideas one would encounter in university departments of psychology in the 1950s and 1960s.
