ABSTRACT
Intervention implementation is a key element to understanding program effectiveness and recently has become more of a focus in education research. Most often, educational researchers are interested in documenting how closely a practitioner delivers an intervention’s components compared to the developers’ intention. Definitions of implementation fidelity are often based on work in prevention programming (e.g., substance-use prevention programs), where the concept of implementation fidelity originated (Bond, Evans, Salyers, Williams, & Kim, 2000). These definitions are diverse including, among others: (1) “the proportion of program components that were implemented” (Mowbray, Holter, Teague, & Bybee, 2003, p. 316), (2) “confirmation that the manipulation of the independent variable occurred as planned” (Moncher & Prinz, 1991, p. 247), (3) “the adherence of actual treatment delivery to the protocol originally developed” (Orwin, 2000, p. 310), and (4) “the degree to which specified procedures are implemented as planned” (Dane & Schneider, 1998, p. 23).
