Session: Fidelity Three Ways: Challenges and Solutions to Measuring Fidelity (Society for Prevention Research 22nd Annual Meeting)

The overarching theme of this paper symposium is to share experiences, challenges and solutions measuring of the detailed fidelity in three behavioral interventions. We will explore differences and similarities measuring fidelity in the New Beginnings Program (NBP), a train-the-trainer study of a suicide prevention training program (ASIST), and a family-based preventive intervention, Familias Unidas (FU). These interventions each need to assess how well an intervention agent delivers the program. We discuss how we each conceptualize and operationalize fidelity measurements, and demonstrate our methods. These include observational methods and computer-based speech analysis.  The benefits and challenges of these methods are discussed.

The first paper, “Measuring Fidelity in the Transfer of Suicide Prevention Training,” describes the use of observational methods for measuring two general dimensions of fidelity (conceptualized as competence and adherence) in a train-the-trainer program for suicide prevention. The development of measures, and well as the methods of data collection and coding, will be presented along with the findings about new trainers’ fidelity to the program in practice.

The second paper, “Developing classification systems for the measurement of fidelity and adaptation for an evidence-based parenting program,” describes observational coding of fidelity in the New Beginnings Program, a parent-training intervention. It will share conceptual, theoretical, and practical considerations in fidelity measurement and present the relationship of fidelity to program outcomes. Further, it will present the measurement of adaptation, focusing on how program facilitators tailored the curriculum of the intervention to the specific target group members.

The third paper, “Computer-based Fidelity Measurements in Behavioral Interventions”, presents a proof of concept that uses speech analysis by computer to overcome challenges in fidelity assessments.

Taken together these three presentations provide new directions for developing efficient and effective implementation of prevention programs.