? ? Intervention fidelity is the consistent delivery of an intervention by an interventionist according to a ? research plan and professional standards. Lack of attention to fidelity can lead to false statements about intervention conduct and effects, and undermine research integrity particularly for behavioral interventions which are notoriously hard to articulate, control and evaluate. Systematic intervention fidelity monitoring can promote research integrity. The Yale Adherence and Competence Scale (YACS), a general system for monitoring intervention fidelity, has been used in behavioral research in psychiatry to promote research integrity. Although nursing is also concerned with the development and testing of behavioral interventions, there is no evidence that systematic intervention fidelity monitoring is being performed in nursing research. The purpose of this study is to examine the utility and outcomes of applying the YACS in nursing as a means to promote research integrity. The YACS will be adapted to be applicable to nursing, and then secondary analysis of taped intervention sessions and outcome data from 2 federally funded nursing behavioral intervention studies for youth with type 1 diabetes will be conducted to: evaluate the psychometric performance of the adapted YACS, assess the effect of intervention fidelity on outcomes for the primary study participants, and explore the impact on outcomes when the analyses are conducted on intervention fidelity ratings for subsets of behavioral intervention sessions or participants compared to the whole sample. Confirmatory factor analysis and mixed models analysis will be the main analytic procedures. The results of the proposed study will be used to inform use of the adapted YACS to promote research integrity in the future development of nursing interventions to improve outcomes for people with chronic health conditions. ? ?
