From the Desired to the Feasibly Expected: an Example of Good Practices to Monitor Rehabilitation Intervention in Children with an ASD Diagnosis
Melissa Zecchin, Silvia Busti Ceccarelli, Maria Enrica Sali, Riccardo Pascuzzo, Elisa Mani, Massimo Molteni
Essential in detecting the change that occurs as a result of rehabilitation projects is to have useful procedures and tools for measuring the efficacy and appropriateness of the treatment. An instrument that satisfies some of these features is the Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS). It is an individualised outcome measurement method whose main purpose is to monitor and verify progress in the rehabilitation field by drawing up well-defined and patient-centred objectives. The aim of this study is to assess the adequacy of the GAS as a leading instrument for planning, monitoring and verifying a short-term intensive rehabilitation intervention in children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. The collected data confirm that the GAS proves to be suitable and appropriate from several points of view: (1) it shows a statistically significant correlation with the scores obtained from the Clinical Global Impression – Improvement Scale (CGI-I), widely used in clinical settings; (2) the instrument makes it possible to attain a good balance between the difficulty of the objective and the possibility of achieving it. Finally, by comparing the T-Scores of two groups of patients collected temporally over time, it observes that clinicians, who become more highly skilled through experience and practical application of the instrument, also improve their ability to identify and arrange useful procedures for the clinical objective. The results show that the GAS can be a good instrument for detecting rehabilitation change by establishing its theoretical and construct roots on a clinically relevant passage: from the desired to the feasibly expected.
Keywords
GAS, ASD, CGI, Outcome measurements, Rehabilitation.
