GB891 Unit 8 Fidelity Monitoring Memo Example

Late, Missed or Delivered: A Unit 8 Fidelity Monitoring Memo for a Supervisor Feedback Study

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB891: Doctoral Project II: Project Design and Implementation

Unit 8 Fidelity Monitoring Memo

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Corliss Baking Company, its supervisors and every threshold are composite and illustrative; the fidelity framework and methods sources cited are real.

Memo

To: Dissertation chair From: Doctoral candidate and Corliss safety manager Re: How the delivery of the supervisor feedback will be monitored and what counts as a departure

Why Fidelity Must Be Measured

Shadish et al. (2002) note that a treatment can fail to show an effect simply because it was not implemented as intended, which they treat as a threat to the validity of conclusions about cause.

If the study finds no difference between intervention and comparison crews, there are two very different explanations: the feedback does not work, or the feedback was never delivered as designed. A study that cannot tell these apart cannot interpret a null result. Carroll et al. (2007) treat fidelity as the degree to which an intervention's content, frequency, duration and reach match what was planned, and note that measuring it allows a study to distinguish failure of the intervention from failure of its implementation. This memo sets out how each element will be measured at Corliss.

Element One: Delivery

What it means. The research assistant sends each of the twelve supervisors a correct feedback sheet each week.

Measure. The time each sheet is sent, from the email record, and whether its figures match the pulse data, checked by the candidate on a random two sheets per week.

Thresholds. A sheet sent by 10:00 a.m. Monday is on time. A sheet sent after 10:00 a.m. but before end of shift Monday is late. A sheet sent on Tuesday or later is missed, because by then the supervisor has already led two shifts without it. A sheet with any figure that does not match the data is incorrect.

Response. Any late, missed or incorrect sheet is recorded in the log and the deviation report. If more than two sheets in a single week are late or missed, the candidate reviews the assistant's weekend workflow with the chair.

Element Two: Receipt

What it means. Each supervisor opens and reads the sheet.

Measure. Email read receipts, and a one-line acknowledgment the supervisor sends back, which also asks whether anything on the sheet was unclear.

Thresholds. A sheet opened by end of shift Monday is received. A sheet opened later in the week is received late. A sheet never opened is not received.

Response. If a supervisor fails to open two consecutive sheets, the research assistant, not the candidate, contacts the supervisor to ask whether the email reached them and whether they prefer a printed copy. The contact does not mention performance.

Element Three: Enactment

What it means. Supervisors raise safety more often in routine exchanges, which is what the feedback asks of them.

Measure. The first pulse item, which counts supervisor safety talk away from the opening meeting, tracked weekly for each intervention crew. Enactment is also an outcome of the study, so this measure is reported as fidelity only in the sense of showing whether the first link in the framework moved.

Threshold. No threshold is set, because changing this measure is the point of the intervention. The memo records the plan to report it weekly so that a stalled first link is visible early.

Element Four: Contamination

What it means. Comparison crews receive no feedback and no comparable new safety program during the twelve weeks.

Measure. The weekly check in the collection log for any new safety initiative at any study plant, and a question in the supervisor interviews at the end asking comparison supervisors whether they changed how they discuss safety.

Threshold. Any new safety initiative at a comparison plant is recorded as a contamination event.

Response. Contamination events are reported in the deviation report, and the analysis will be run with and without the weeks affected.

Coverage

Coverage means the share of intended recipients reached. For this study, the intended recipients are the twelve supervisors and, through them, their crews. If a supervisor leaves, the crew is still counted, but the weeks without a supervisor are recorded as weeks without delivery. The fidelity summary will report coverage as the share of the 144 planned supervisor-weeks in which a sheet was delivered and received.

A null result is informative only if the study can show that the feedback reached the supervisors it was meant for.

Reporting Fidelity

The implementation chapter will report each fidelity measure, with the share of weeks meeting each threshold, before any outcome is reported. Durlak and DuPre (2008), reviewing hundreds of prevention program studies, found that programs carried out more completely tended to achieve stronger results, a finding that supports reporting delivery first, and it applies directly here: readers judge an effect only after they know what was delivered. Any analysis comparing crews will also be run restricted to supervisor-weeks with on-time delivery and receipt, as a check on whether results depend on fidelity.

References

Carroll, C., Patterson, M., Wood, S., Booth, A., Rick, J., & Balain, S. (2007). A conceptual framework for implementation fidelity. Implementation Science, 2, Article 40. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-2-40

Durlak, J. A., & DuPre, E. P. (2008). Implementation matters: A review of research on the influence of implementation on program outcomes and the factors affecting implementation. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41(3-4), 327-350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-008-9165-0

Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Houghton Mifflin.