Intervention fidelity: multiple strategies to design, implement, and assess mastery motivational climate behavioral interventions

ABSTRACTBackground Mastery motivational climate (MMC) interventions are an evidence-based approach utilized to deliver motor skill interventions (MSI) for young children. There are 6 environmental characteristics and instructional cues an instructor must appropriately manipulate to implement a MMC. These are known as the TARGET and stand for Task, Authority, Recognition, Grouping, Evaluation, and Time.Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the procedural, educational, and instructional components of intervention fidelity that we believe should be considered in the design, training, delivery, and assessment of a MMC intervention. The design phase should consider the intended intervention exposure and dosage prior to the intervention and develop a plan for implementation and measurement of intervention dose across the study. Conducting effective training for research personnel and developing formal implementation protocols are also important for intervention fidelity. During the intervention it is important to measure adherence to the TARGET structures using a formal checklist. Finally, we find it important to describe the extent to which the intervention was delivered as planned and report how closely we aligned with TARGET adherence throughout intervention implementation.Findings The discussion highlights how our increased efforts in our intervention fidelity have enhanced the quality and delivery of our MMC interventions from a pedagogical perspective. Specifically, in how we have used previous fidelity data to inform our future MMC intervention studies. There is more work to be done in MMC intervention fidelity, especially moving towards more teacher implemented MMC studies in the future as well as addressing participant level (i.e. attendance) fidelity concerns.KEYWORDS: Fidelitymotor skill interventionsmotor developmentyoung childrenphysical educationautonomy-supportive climate AcknowledgementsApproval for the study was obtained from the authors’ Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research. There are no acknowledgements associated with this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).