Another purpose of this study was to examine treatment fidelity and the extent to which
fidelity was related to treatment outcomes. Although the fidelity data were limited to an
analysis and coding of the FACET Record Form, they do point to some potentially useful
findings. Most important is evidence that school-based teams were able to implement
FACET components with a high level of fidelity and that fidelity was associated with
behavior gains for FOC and GEN children.
Although our results provide evidence of the effectiveness of the FACET approach,
there were some limitations to this study. First, despite making significant improvements
in their classroom behaviors, FOC and GEN children continued to exhibit classroom
behavior at post-intervention that fell short of teachers’ behavioral expectations for
children. Using a criterion recommended by Campbell (2005), only FOC children
exhibited positive behavior at post-intervention that was within a normative range for
typical children, specifically Social Cooperation and Engagement and Learning
Behaviors. It should be noted that the CBSP was implemented for GEN children for only 5–6 weeks compared to 11–12 weeks for FOC children. It is possible that a longer
period of intervention for both groups could bring all behaviors within a normative range.
A second limitation is that there is no evidence of long-term maintenance of behavior
gains for children in 2nd through 5th grades. In fact, FACET team participants expressed
some concern at the conclusion of the study that, without training and communication with
teachers in the upper elementary grades, FOC and GEN children may not be able to
maintain their progress. Building on the success of the FACET model with preschool and
primary grades, we plan to expand the program for implementation on a school-wide basis
(for all grade levels) in participating schools. A final limitation of this study was the
teacher-nomination method of identifying FOC and GEN children for intervention.
Although there is practical utility in allowing teachers to make these determinations, the
lack of a standardized measure with norms to identify challenging children limits an
understanding of generalization to other samples of young children.