Implementation fidelity is the degree to which an intervention is delivered as intended and is critical to successful translation of evidence-based interventions into practice. Diminished fidelity may be why interventions that work well in highly controlled trials may fail to yield the same outcomes when applied in real life contexts. The purpose of this paper is to define implementation fidelity and describe its importance for the larger science of implementation, discuss data collection methods and current efforts in measuring implementation fidelity in community-based prevention interventions, and present future research directions for measuring implementation fidelity that will advance implementation science.

The authors tested a 12-week parent training program with parents (n = 208) and teachers (n = 77) of 2-3-year-olds in day care centers serving low-income families of color in Chicago. Eleven centers were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: (a) parent and teacher training (PT + TT), (b) parent training (PT), (c) teacher training (TT), and (d) waiting list control (C). After controlling for parent stress, PT and PT + TT parents reported higher self-efficacy and less coercive discipline and were observed to have more positive behaviors than C and TT parents. Among toddlers in high-risk behavior problem groups, toddlers in the experimental conditions showed greater improvement than controls. Most effects were retained 1 year later. Benefits were greatest when parents directly received training.

The effectiveness of a parent training program for promoting positive parent-child relationships was examined among families of 2-year-olds. Forty-six mothers and fathers and their toddlers were assigned to either an intervention or comparison group. Intervention group parents participated in a 10-week program that focused on principles for effectively interacting with their toddlers. Parents completed measures of parenting self-efficacy, depression, stress, and perceptions of their toddler's behaviors and were videotaped playing with their toddlers preintervention, postintervention, and 3 months following the intervention. Repeated measures ANOVAs showed that the parent training program led to significant increases in maternal self-efficacy, decreases in maternal stress, and improvements in the quality of mother-toddler interactions. No significant effects were found among fathers. Explanations for obtaining different outcomes for mothers and fathers are discussed and directions for future research are recommended.

Low-income urban parents of color enrolled in a parent training study were interviewed to understand what motivated their participationand what led 30% of them to subsequently drop out. Most enrolled because they wanted to be better parents. Most dropped out because of time and schedule constraints. Retention was higher when parents' motivations for participation matched program goals. Program location and qualities of the recruiter were cited most often as important; financial compensation was cited least often as important.

This study tested the efficacy of a 12-session parent training program, the Chicago Parent Program (CPP), which was developed in collaboration with African American and Latino parents. Using growth curve modeling, data were analyzed from 253 parents (58.9% African American, 32.8% Latino) of 2-4 year old children enrolled in 7 day care centers serving low-income families. Day care centers were matched and randomly assigned to intervention and waiting-list control conditions. At 1-year follow-up, intervention group parents used less corporal punishment and issued fewer commands with their children. Intervention children exhibited fewer behavior problems during observed play and clean-up sessions than controls. Additional group differences were observed when dose was included in the analytic model. Parents who participated in at least 50% of CPP sessions also reported greater improvements in parenting self-efficacy, more consistent discipline, greater warmth, and a decline in child behavior problems when compared to reports from controls. The implications of these results for preventive parent training with low-income African American and Latino parents and the role of intervention dose on parent-child outcomes are discussed.Keywords parent training; ethnic minority; prevention; preschool Parent training is one of the most widely studied interventions for reducing childhood behavior problems, increasing positive parenting behaviors, and reducing parent reliance on harsh disciplinary strategies (Kazdin, 1997;McMahon, 1999;Sanders, 2007). Moreover, many studies have shown that parent training effects can be maintained over time (Gross et al., 2003;Irvine, Biglan, Smolkowski, Metzler, & Ary, 1999;Strayhorn & Weidman, 1991;Webster-Stratton, 1998b). As a result, parent training is increasingly used, both exclusively or as a component of more comprehensive prevention programs to reduce behavioral risk among children from low-income families (Conduct Problems Prevention Group, 1999;Dumas, Prinz, Smith, & Laughlin, 1999;Gottfredson et al., 2006). NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptPreventive interventions targeting low-income families typically include a large number of African-American and Latino families, primarily due to the fact that these ethnic minority groups are disproportionately represented among those living in poverty (Corcoran & Adams, 1997). Yet many of the empirically-supported interventions used to help low-income and ethnic minority parents were originally developed and tested on middle-income and non-Latino White samples (Coard, Wallace, Stevenson, & Brotman, 2004;Forehand & Kotchick, 1996;Gorman & Balter, 1997).Research shows that economically disadvantaged families tend to receive less benefit from parent training than families from higher socioeconomic groups (Lundahl, Risser, & Lovejoy, 2006), a finding some have attributed to the various correlates of economic disadvantage (Dumas & Wahler, 1983). However, it is possible that diminished ...