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Developing Treatment Integrity Measures for Teacher-Delivered Interventions: Progress, Recommendations and Future Directions

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Abstract

While the measurement of treatment integrity is important to determine how much, and how well, interventions are delivered in schools, the science of treatment integrity is not well developed in education research. The purpose of this paper is to describe a program of research that has developed treatment integrity measures over the past 10 years to assess teacher delivery of an indicated program targeting reductions in problem behavior in early childhood and elementary school classrooms. Specifically, this paper will highlight the importance of active use of conceptual models to guide treatment integrity measure development, multidimensional assessment of treatment integrity and training procedures for observers, using several studies to illustrate the evolution and refinement of our measurement approach. Recommendations for researchers developing and evaluating interventions in schools are provided, as are recommendations to help the field move toward a more rigorous science of treatment integrity.

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Funding

This research was supported by Grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (R324A11017, R305A140487, R305A150246, R324A160158 and R305A180182). The opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily reflective of the position of or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Counseling and Special Education, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1015 W. Main St, PO Box 842020, Richmond, VA, 23284, USA

    Kevin S. Sutherland & Nicholas Mccormick

  2. Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, 806 W. Franklin St, PO Box 842018, Richmond, VA, 23284, USA

    Bryce D. McLeod

  3. Department of Special Education, School Psychology and Early Childood Studies, University of Florida, 1345 Norman Hall, PO Box 117050, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    Maureen A. Conroy

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  1. Kevin S. Sutherland
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  2. Bryce D. McLeod
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  3. Maureen A. Conroy
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  4. Nicholas Mccormick
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Correspondence to Kevin S. Sutherland.

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All study procedures involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the researchers’ institutional review boards and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments of comparable ethical standards.

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Sutherland, K.S., McLeod, B.D., Conroy, M.A. et al. Developing Treatment Integrity Measures for Teacher-Delivered Interventions: Progress, Recommendations and Future Directions. School Mental Health 14, 7–19 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-021-09423-z

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