Reliability and Sensitivity to Change of Goal Attainment Scaling in Occupational Therapy Nonclassroom Educational Experiences.

Occupational therapy programs are charged with measuring student progress in nonclassroom experiential components (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2012). Currently, the major nonclassroom educational experience is Level II fieldwork. Level II performance is assessed using the Fieldwork Performance Evaluation, which is inappropriate for measuring doctoral-level experiential component achievement. This study's purpose was to determine test-retest reliability and sensitivity of Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) for assessing skill development in nonclassroom occupational therapy experiences. GAS demonstrated high test-retest reliability for each of the five goals, and we found a significant amount of change on the GAS, with higher scores at the 12-wk than at the 6-wk assessment. Results indicate that the GAS is reliable and sensitive to changes in student performance on Level II fieldwork and may therefore warrant investigation as a valid tool to measure student performance in the entry-level doctoral experiential component.