Table 3.

Strategies for improving clinical research fidelity: assessment fidelity.

Area addressed	Strategies
Ongoing clinician assessment training and support	Use assessments with strong validity and reliability
	Create detailed, written manuals for all assessment tasks
	Have experts in specific assessment protocols serve as consultants as needed
	Provide ongoing professional development support
	Hold regular clinician meetings to discuss assessment questions and concerns
Monitoring of assessment delivery	Have fidelity coordinators observe clinicians' assessment sessions regularly (either live or video-recorded) and provide feedback
	Have clinicians complete self-assessments and peer assessments for additional feedback
Ongoing rater training, reliability, and support	Create rater “teams” for rater specific training and peer mentoring
	Have experts in coding/scoring serve as consultants as needed
	Consistently check inter- and intrareliability of raters
	Hold regular rater meetings to provide feedback on reliability and to discuss questions and concerns