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CHS Home > Services > Research & Training > GAIN Home Page > GAIN Q

Global Appraisal of Individual Needs - Quick  (GAIN-Q)

The Global Appraisal of Individual Needs - Quick (GAIN-Q) instrument is a general assessment used to identify various life problems among adolescents and adults in the general population. Designed for use by personnel in diverse settings (e.g. Employee Assistance Programs, Student Assistance Programs, health clinics, juvenile justice, criminal justice, etc.), the instrument is used to

  • identify those in need of a longer, more detailed assessment;
  • identify those who may benefit from a brief intervention; and
  • guide staff to make effective referral and placement decisions.
Although the GAIN-Q does not provide diagnostic information per se, it does identify areas in need of further exploration.

The GAIN-Q is an efficient behavioral health screening instrument. It can be interviewer- or self-administered in 20 to 30 minutes, and both hardcopy and computer-assisted administrations are possible. Most items are written in a “yes/no” format.

Currently, the GAIN-Q is available in 2 forms: a GAIN-Q "Core" instrument and a GAIN-Q "Full" instrument.

The GAIN-Q CORE instrument is organized into ten sections:

1. Background 5. Emotional Health 8. Service Utilization
2. General Factors 6. Behavioral Health 9. End
3. Sources of Stress 7. Substance-Related Issues 10. Case Disposition
4. Physical Health

The first four sections provide background and formative indices of factors that are related to behavioral health problems. The next three sections (Emotional Health, Behavioral Health, Substance-Related Issues) contain the core behavioral health indices. These sections assess the breadth and prevalence of problems using the core symptoms from the central scales of the full GAIN instrument. The core symptom scales cover behavior during the past year (“past 12 months” on the instrument) and each concludes with an item (or items) on the number of days (or times) the problems have occurred during the past 90 days. The instrument concludes with sections covering the participant’s desire for help and the context of the assessment (End) as well as a staff-only section to document reasons for referral and recommendations (Case Disposition).

The GAIN-Q FULL instrument is composed of the GAIN-Q CORE along with one or a series of additional scales specific to user needs. Currently, the supplemental measure that is included as part of this longer GAIN-Q assessment is the Reasons for Quitting (RFQ) scale. The RFQ is used in the 5-session Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-5 (MET/CBT-5) treatment (Sampl & Kadden, 2001) and is needed to create a Personal Feedback Report (PFR) in the Assessment Building System (ABS). A second optional section -- the Optional Special Study Detail -- is used to document data from study-specific assessments a project may be using in the situation where these assessments are not a part of the supplemental measure(s) described above. This last section is purely optional and added as a courtesy for users.

Materials currently available on the GAIN-Q include:

For additional information concerning the larger family of GAIN instruments and their underlying psychometrics go to the GAIN Home Page.