Treatment Fidelity Assessment

Treatment fidelity assessment measures the degree to which an intervention is actually delivered as it was designed — covering adherence to prescribed components, the competence with which they are delivered, the dose received, and how clearly the intervention differs from other approaches. Codified for behavioral research by the NIH Behavior Change Consortium and framed conceptually by Carroll and colleagues, it protects the validity of intervention research and the integrity of evidence-based practice by ensuring that when an intervention is studied or implemented, what was named is what was done.