The McLeod lab is engaged in research projects designed to develop and evaluate tools, strategies, and interventions to help improve the quality of mental health care in community settings for youth and their families. A major theme in our research is developing and evaluating instruments designed to assess the core components of treatment integrity. Despite the importance of treatment integrity for psychosocial treatment and treatment implementation research, measurement gaps have limited research efforts in the youth psychosocial treatment field. We have addressed these gaps by developing gold-standard observational and self-report instruments designed to assess treatment adherence (how closely a treatment delivered matches the protocol), differentiation (the extent to which proscribed interventions are present), and competence (the quality of delivery). Our current funded work in this area focuses on developing pragmatic observer- and self-report treatment integrity instruments to support quality control efforts designed to promote the evaluation, implementation, and sustainability of evidence-based programs in community settings.
