Advancing the Use of Core Components of 

Effective Programs: Suggestions for Researchers 

Publishing Evaluation Results

Cheri Hoffman, Allison Dymnicki, Catherine Bradshaw, 

Sandra Wilson, Byron Powell, Sean Grant
Housekeeping
Advancing the Use of Core Components of 

Effective Programs: Suggestions for Researchers 

Publishing Evaluation Results

https://youth.gov/sites/default/files/ASPE-Brief_Core-Components.pdf
What are Core Components? 

Core Components are the parts, features, attributes, or 

characteristics of a program that research suggests influences its 

success when implemented effectively (Ferber, Sileo, and Wiggins, 2019). 

https://forumfyi.org/knowledge-center/advancing-core-components/

Core components of effective programs can:

• serve as the unit of analysis that researchers use to determine 

“what works” and eventually “for whom” and “under what 

circumstances”

• become the areas practitioners and policymakers seek to replicate 

within and across a range of related programs and systems. 4
Five Steps for 

Advancing the 

Use of Core 

Components of 

Effective 

Programs

1. Identifying: “We think these are core components ...”

Developing theories about which identified components of programs might be instrumental in 

helping targeted populations achieved desires outcomes

2. Testing: “Do the data say these are the core components?”

Winnowing the identified components based on which ones empirically predict the targeted 

population's improvement in desired outcomes across multiple contexts and subpopulations

3. Empowering: “Can we create supports to help people use these?”

Creating guides, tools, assessments, protocols, techniques, and processes that facilitate the 

translation and dissemination of core components for use by practitioners

4. Validating: “Did the supports work?”

Testing the tools and methods to see if they increased the use

of the core components and if this led to better participant outcomes

5. Scaling: “Can we implement these supports on a broader scale?”

Implementing a strategy to scale up the use of the tools and methods that were proven

to increase practitioners’ use of the core components
• Second in the series of working papers designed to increase 

awareness, understanding, and use of the “core components” 

approach

• Purpose is to encourage researchers to conduct and publish 

research in a way that it can be used to inform the kinds of 

meta-analysis crucial to a core components approach. 

• Provides examples of the information researchers should 

routinely collect and report from program evaluations and 

outcome studies

Overview of “Suggestions for Researchers”
How Did We Develop the Suggestions?

Gathered input from federal and nonfederal experts over two years 

The suggestions build on existing resources in the field:

• The CONSORT-Social Psychological Interventions (SPI) was adapted from 

CONSORT so that behavioral and social scientists report randomized controlled trials 

transparently.

• TIDieR is a guide and reporting checklist developed to improve the completeness of reporting, 

and ultimately the replicability, of interventions done in clinical settings.

• BCT Taxonomy is a reliable taxonomy that could be used across behaviors, disciplines, and 

areas of interest to understand “active ingredients” of behavior change interventions.

• The Oxford Implementation Index is a methodology designed to develop and test 

methods for assessing implementation fidelity that can be applied to many domains. 7
Reporting on full breadth of data in research and evaluation 

can facilitate systematic reviews and meta-analyses that 

identify and test core components

Information about the following types of characteristics 

need to be collected and reported:

• Setting

• Participant

• Program

• Implementation 8

What Kind of Information is Needed?