Introduction

Over the past two decades, researchers and policy makers have increasingly emphasized the need to develop comprehensive evaluations to understand not only the outcomes produced by a program, but also the mechanisms and elements of a program that influence their outcomes. The assessment of implementation fidelity has been highlighted as critical to understanding how programs are implemented in efficacy studies as well as how programs are implemented as they transition from research settings into “real world” settings (Domitrovich & Greenberg, 2000; Durlak & DuPre, 2008; Dusenbury, Branningan, Falco, & Hansen, 2003; Harachi, Abbott, Catalano, Haggerty, & Felming, 1999). As such, procedures for documenting fidelity should be incorporated into program designs and fidelity measurement should be part of evaluation plans.