A new tool to assess treatment fidelity and evaluation of treatment fidelity across 10 years of health behavior research.
A. Bellg, B. Borrelli, et al. (2004) previously developed a framework that consisted of strategies to enhance treatment fidelity of health behavior interventions. The present study used this framework to (a) develop a measure of treatment fidelity and (b) use the measure to evaluate treatment fidelity in articles published in 5 journals over 10 years. Three hundred forty-two articles met inclusion criteria; 22% reported strategies to maintain provider skills, 27% reported checking adherence to protocol, 35% reported using a treatment manual, 54% reported using none of these strategies, and 12% reported using all 3 strategies. The mean proportion adherence to treatment fidelity strategies was .55; 15.5% of articles achieved greater than or equal to .80. This tool may be useful for researchers, grant reviewers, and editors planning and evaluating trials.
Borrelli
Belinda
B
Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, Brown Medical School, Miriam Hospital, Providence, RI 02903, USA. belinda_borrelli@brown.edu
Sepinwall
Deborah
D
Ernst
Denise
D
Bellg
Albert J
AJ
Czajkowski
Susan
S
Breger
Rosemary
R
DeFrancesco
Carol
C
Levesque
Chantal
C
Sharp
Daryl L
DL
Ogedegbe
Gbenga
G
Resnick
Barbara
B
Orwig
Denise
D
D035841:Behavioral Research / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D015706:Bibliometrics; D002985:Clinical Protocols; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D018579:Patient Selection; D017712:Peer Review, Research; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011593:Psychology, Social; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards*; D012962:Sociology, Medical