The Effect of Home-School Communication on Treatment Integrity

Abstract

Federal policy and school psychology practice have recently increased advocacy for the use of evidence-based interventions. Treatment integrity is an important component of evidenced-based interventions and individuals who implement these interventions may encounter barriers to proper implementation. Performance feedback has been used as an effective way to improve treatment integrity for teachers, which has primarily used feedback regarding student outcomes and implementer adherence to intervention procedures. The purpose of the present studies was to consider the utility of home to school communication as a method of performance feedback regarding a student's response to a Daily Behavior Report Card (DRC) intervention targeting academic engagement in improving teacher treatment integrity levels. Results indicated that home-school communication in insolation might not be enough to promote high levels of teacher treatment integrity. Results also suggested that limited improvement in overall student academic engagement could be related to low to moderate levels of teacher treatment integrity, which provides additional support for the importance of implementation fidelity.