Introduction- Collaborative Goal Setting and Goal Attainment Scaling in Pediatric Occupational Therapy

Sandhya S -

Hello! My name is Sandhya Sridhar, and I’m a senior at BASIS Phoenix. Since a young age, I have loved interacting with kids and admired their ability to live in the moment. This passion led me to pursue occupational therapy, a field that combines my interest in psychology and focuses on building independence. It is a very hands-on and versatile profession, and I’m excited to dive deeper into the field through this research experience.

My project is about “Exploring the Role of Collaborative Goal Setting and Goal Attainment Scaling in Enhancing Pediatric Occupational Therapy Outcomes.”

For context, in occupational therapy, therapists set personalized goals to address clients’ developmental challenges. A key part of this is collaborative goal setting, where therapists partner with clients, families, and interdisciplinary teams to create achievable objectives that align with the client’s needs.

I will be using the Goal Attainment Scale (GAS) to measure progress, having families rate goal achievement on a Likert scale from -2 to 2, where -2 indicates the child asks for help with the goal after one independent attempt, and 2 indicates they ask for help only after five attempts. Below is a general image of what the scale looks like:Goal Attainment Scale (GAS)

Since most of a child’s time is spent outside of therapy, reinforcement at home is crucial. To track this, I will give families weekly checklists to monitor their child’s consistency with the home program. and assess how parent participation influences goal attainment. It has been shown that involving parents in goal setting empowers families to prioritize and track goals, creating consistency.

I will be collecting my data at a therapy clinic called Sunrise Therapy Services where I will work with one of the occupational therapists, Sheila Mick, who is also my on-site advisor. This project is a new experience for me, so I look forward to learning more about the inner workings behind goal setting in therapy!

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    shriya_s
    This is a very cool project! Will you only be getting data from the Goal attainment scale or from other sources as well?
    February 5, 2025 at 9:54 am - Reply
    brittany_holtzman
    I'm so excited for the internship portion of your senior project to start!! Great introduction post! Do you know yet what type of goals or challenges the children in your study may have? Best of luck next week!! -Mrs. Holtzman
    February 5, 2025 at 10:37 am - Reply
    sandhya_s
    Yes, I will collecting data from the Goal Attainment Scale, as well as, with the weekly home program checklists. As for the specific goals, I haven't determined who I am working with yet out of all the kids at the clinic because I have to distribute the consent forms first. But some of the example goals I've seen are tying shoes, being able to remain seated during mealtimes, and getting dressed in the morning with decreased frustration.
    February 9, 2025 at 7:52 pm - Reply

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