ScholarGate
Assistant

Compare methods

Review your selected methods side by side; rows that differ are highlighted.

Standardized Clinical Cutoff×Goal Attainment Scaling×
FieldSocial WorkSocial Work
FamilyProcess / pipelineProcess / pipeline
Year of origin19911968
OriginatorNeil S. Jacobson & Paula TruaxThomas J. Kiresuk & Robert E. Sherman
TypeMethod for judging whether individual change on a standardized measure is reliable and clinically meaningfulIndividualized, criterion-referenced outcome measurement procedure
Seminal sourceJacobson, N. S., & Truax, P. (1991). Clinical significance: A statistical approach to defining meaningful change in psychotherapy research. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59(1), 12–19. DOI ↗Kiresuk, T. J., & Sherman, R. E. (1968). Goal attainment scaling: A general method for evaluating comprehensive community mental health programs. Community Mental Health Journal, 4(6), 443–453. DOI ↗
AliasesClinical Cutoff Score, Clinical Significance Method, Reliable Change Index, Jacobson-Truax MethodGAS, Goal Attainment Scale, Kiresuk-Sherman Goal Attainment Scaling, Individualized Goal Scaling
Related33
SummaryThe standardized clinical cutoff approach, developed by Jacobson and Truax, judges whether an individual client's change on a standardized measure is both statistically reliable and clinically meaningful. It pairs a Reliable Change Index — which asks whether a pre-to-post change is larger than the measurement error of the instrument — with a cutoff score that marks the boundary between the dysfunctional and functional (normal) populations. A client who moves reliably across that cutoff is counted as recovered, giving practice and research a defensible, individual-level definition of meaningful improvement.Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) is a method for measuring the outcomes of an individualized intervention by writing, in advance, a small set of client-specific goals and defining for each a graded scale of possible outcomes from much worse than expected to much better than expected. After the intervention, the actual outcome on each goal is scored on this scale and the scores are combined into a single standardized index, allowing idiosyncratic, personally meaningful goals to be aggregated and compared across clients and programs. It was introduced by Thomas Kiresuk and Robert Sherman in 1968 to evaluate community mental health programs.
ScholarGateDataset
  1. v1
  2. 2 Sources
  3. PUBLISHED
  1. v1
  2. 2 Sources
  3. PUBLISHED

Go to search Download slides

ScholarGateCompare methods: Standardized Clinical Cutoff · Goal Attainment Scaling. Retrieved 2026-06-24 from https://scholargate.app/en/compare