Compare methods

	Self-Anchored Rating Scale	Rapid Assessment Instrument
Field	Social Work	Social Work
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2009	2002
Originator	Codified in social-work practice evaluation by Bloom, Fischer & Orme	Walter W. Hudson and the clinical-measurement tradition; codified by Springer, Abell & Hudson
Type	Individualized self-report rating scale with client-defined anchors	Brief, standardized, self-report measure for repeated use in practice
Seminal source	Bloom, M., Fischer, J., & Orme, J. G. (2009). Evaluating Practice: Guidelines for the Accountable Professional (6th ed.). Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. ISBN: 9780205458066	Springer, D. W., Abell, N., & Hudson, W. W. (2002). Creating and validating rapid assessment instruments for practice and research: Part 1. Research on Social Work Practice, 12(3), 408–439.
Aliases	SARS, Self-Anchored Scale, Individualized Rating Scale, Client-Anchored Scale	RAI, Rapid Assessment Instruments, Brief Standardized Self-Report Scale, Clinical Measurement Package Scales
Related	4	4
Summary	A self-anchored rating scale (SARS) is an individualized measurement tool in which a client rates a personally relevant target — a feeling, thought, or behavior that may not be captured by any standardized instrument — on a fixed numeric scale whose points the client and worker have anchored in advance with concrete, individually meaningful descriptions. Widely taught in social-work practice evaluation through Bloom, Fischer, and Orme's work, it lets a worker measure highly idiosyncratic internal states repeatedly and reliably, supplying the data for single-system designs when no off-the-shelf scale fits.	A rapid assessment instrument (RAI) is a short, standardized, self-report measure designed to be completed quickly and repeatedly so that a social worker can assess the magnitude of a client's problem, compare it against a validated clinical cutoff, and monitor change over the course of an intervention. The format was championed by Walter Hudson, whose Clinical Measurement Package scales set the template, and was systematized for practitioners by Springer, Abell, and Hudson, who laid out how to create and validate such instruments for practice and research.