Using Participatory Action Research to Design an Intervention Integrity System in the Urban Schools

Abstract

While integrity is often thought of as the degree to which a program is applied as intended, researchers have recently widened the lens to include not only monitoring of program content, but also evaluating the process by which interventions are implemented and the extent to which the intervention is received as intended. Further, a partnership-based approach has been identified to be as critical to facilitating appropriate and accurate monitoring and interpretation of intervention integrity in the cultural context. Building on these expanded definitions of intervention integrity, this study describes how an intervention monitoring system was developed through participatory research in the context of a classroom-based aggression prevention program for students in an inner-city elementary school. The system highlighted evaluation of the quality of intervention delivery and participant responsiveness. Factor analysis, descriptive statistics, and comparison to a less nuanced integrity monitoring system provided information on the informativeness of this new system. Preliminary investigation, however, suggested that future research is necessary to examine the extent to which differences in quality of implementation across classrooms predict clinically significant differences in program outcomes.