Self-Anchored Rating Scale

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.