An evaluation of the fidelity of implementation of a school-based drug abuse prevention program: project toward no drug abuse (TND)

This article provides an implementation fidelity evaluation of the fourth experimental trial of Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND). Two theoretical content components of the curriculum were examined to increase our understanding of the active ingredients of successful drug abuse prevention programs. A total of 18 senior high schools were randomly assigned by block to receive one of three conditions: cognitive perception information curriculum, cognitive perception information + behavioral skills curriculum, or standard care (control). These curricula were delivered to both regular and continuation high schools students (n=2331) by trained project health educators and regular classroom teachers. Across all program schools, the two different curricula were implemented as intended, were received favorably by students, and showed significant improvements in knowledge specific to the theoretical content being delivered. This pattern of results suggests that the experimental manipulations worked as intended, and thus, permit the attribution of future behavioral outcome differences between conditions to differences in content of Project TND material provided rather than to differences in the fidelity of delivery. Further, our findings indicate that Project TND can be implemented effectively with low and high risk youth in a general environment as well as with high risk youth in a more specialized environment.