Compare methods

	Self-Anchored Rating Scale	Single-System Design
Field	Social Work	Social Work
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2009	2009
Originator	Codified in social-work practice evaluation by Bloom, Fischer & Orme	Martin Bloom, Joel Fischer & John G. Orme (codification in social work)
Type	Individualized self-report rating scale with client-defined anchors	Time-series design for evaluating intervention with a single client system
Seminal source	Bloom, M., Fischer, J., & Orme, J. G. (2009). Evaluating Practice: Guidelines for the Accountable Professional (6th ed.). Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. ISBN: 9780205458066	Bloom, M., Fischer, J., & Orme, J. G. (2009). Evaluating Practice: Guidelines for the Accountable Professional (6th ed.). Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. ISBN: 9780205458066
Aliases	SARS, Self-Anchored Scale, Individualized Rating Scale, Client-Anchored Scale	Single-Subject Design, Single-Case Design, N-of-1 Design, Single-System Evaluation
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 single-system design is a time-series approach to evaluating practice in which a single client system — an individual, family, group, or organization — is measured repeatedly on a clearly defined target before and during (and sometimes after) an intervention. By tracking the same system over time rather than comparing a treatment group to a control group, it lets a practitioner judge whether their own intervention is associated with change in the people they actually serve. It is the methodological backbone of the 'accountable professional' tradition codified by Bloom, Fischer, and Orme.