A process evaluation of the Friendships and Dating Program for adults with developmental disabilities: measuring the fidelity of program delivery.
Community staff can run the 20-session Friendships and Dating Program with high fidelity—use the newer 3-point checklist to track it in half the time.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Community staff ran the 20-session Friendships and Dating Program for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Researchers watched every session and scored how closely staff followed the lesson plans. They also counted how many adults stayed engaged.
What they found
Staff stuck to the script. Their fidelity scores stayed high across all lessons. Adults came to class and took part. The program worked in the real world, not just in a lab.
How this fits with other research
Suhrheinrich et al. (2020) now offers a faster way. Their 3-point Likert checklist gives the same reliability as the longer 2012 form, so you can save time without losing quality.
Frankel et al. (2010) tried a similar idea with younger kids. Children’s Friendship Training used parent coaches for elementary students with autism. FDP moves the same social-skills model up to adults.
Shawler et al. (2021) pushed coaching online. They taught caregivers to run full behavior plans over Zoom for adults with developmental disabilities and still hit high fidelity. Together, these papers show the method travels: in person, with parents, or through a screen.
Why it matters
You no longer need researchers in the room to keep quality high. Use the short 2020 checklist before each FDP lesson. Score three items, fix anything below a 3, and move on. Your adults still get the full 20-session dose, and you finish paperwork in five minutes.
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Join Free →Print the 3-point fidelity sheet from Suhrheinrich et al. (2020), clip it to your FDP binder, and score the next lesson before lunch.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are frequently abused in dating and partnered relationships. The Friendships and Dating Program (FDP) was developed to prevent violence in dating and partnered relationships and to teach social skills needed to develop healthy, meaningful relationships among this population. A pilot study indicated the FDP resulted in a statistically significant increase in social network size and a significant decrease in instances of interpersonal violence. This study focused on utilizing a Process Evaluation Model (PEM) to document the level of treatment fidelity in the delivery of the 20 session FDP for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities delivered by community agency personnel. The PEM also documented the amount of content delivered to the participants during each session. Results indicated that direct service personnel delivered the program with a high level of fidelity. Additionally, participants engaged at high rates over the course of the 10-week program. Further, the results indicated the FDP topics and methods of delivery were appropriate for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Programs should use a Process Evaluation Model (PEM) and methods as a routine quality control mechanism to assess provision of salient participant procedures.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2012 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.08.016