Dance movement psychotherapy intervention protocol for the caregivers of children on the autism spectrum: Development and fidelity evaluation

Abstract

Caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face significant challenges as the demands of their role often surpass the resources available to them. Aiming to support the emotional and social wellbeing of caregivers, such as parents and teachers of children with ASD, a dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) intervention protocol was developed and implemented in a feasibility and process evaluation project. This article describes the development, and discusses the fidelity assessment, of the DMP intervention protocol. The fidelity assessment was conducted by calculating inter-rater reliability between three raters (therapist, researcher and external expert) on a 5-point Likert questionnaire through retrospective video analysis of the sessions. The results showed good agreement among the raters with a maximum mean difference of 0.57. High (75 % and above) adherence to the protocol was noted for 11 out of 12 criteria. The article critically evaluates the strengths and challenges of conducting a fidelity assessment of an intervention protocol. The overall structure and components of all the sessions of the protocol are illustrated in line with the template for intervention description and replication (TIDieR) checklist and guidelines to offer growing opportunities for replicable DMP intervention-based studies.