Classifying client goals in community-based ABI rehabilitation: a taxonomy for profiling service delivery and conceptualizing outcomes

PURPOSE: To develop, confirm and trial a framework for analysing the content of goals set within community-based rehabilitation. This framework (taxonomy) is proposed as a tool to assist in service evaluation and outcome exploration. METHOD: Qualitative thematic analysis and categorization of 1765 rehabilitation goal statements in a four phase process of synthesis, refinement, verification and application. RESULTS: A taxonomy of goal content was developed comprising 21 categories within five domains, utilizing 125 descriptors. The taxonomy demonstrated good inter-rater consistency and was able to discriminate between similar but related data sets comprising goal statements. CONCLUSION: Structured analysis of the content of goal setting (particularly in community rehabilitation) utilizing a framework such as the proposed taxonomy has considerable potential as a 'window' into service delivery to broaden the parameters of existing service evaluation and to more clearly link outcome exploration to intervention.