Use of effective and efficient quality control methods to implement psychosocial interventions.

Abstract

Quality control methods, including therapist trainingI and supervision procedures, are used to establish and maintain fidelity to a psychosocial intervention. The effectiveness and efficiency of these methods impact both the validity of research on intervention effects and the success of dissemination and implementation in routine care contexts. Quality control methods utilizing active training strategies and review of observational treatment session data are more effective than the methods that rely on passive learning. The purpose of this review was to catalogue the use of an array of quality control methods in studies of evidence-based psychosocial treatments, to evaluate how often the most potentially effective and efficient methods have been used, and to evaluate the variability in the use of these methods across different treatment models, client populations, or clinical settings. The results indicate that the most effective methods have been used to implement fewer than a quarter of the treatments studied. Variability across treatment contexts is presented and implications for future research are discussed.