EMPIRICAL ARTICLES Closing the Research–Practice Gap: Factors Affecting Adoption and Implementation of a Children’s Mental Health Program Joanna L. Henderson and Sherri MacKay Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto Michele Peterson-Badali Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto Despite the availability of effective interventions, they are not widely used in commu- nity mental health centers. This study examined the adoption and implementation of The Arson Prevention Program for Children (TAPP–C), a program for juvenile firesetters developed at a teaching hospital and disseminated to community settings. Questionnaire data from mental health professionals were used to evaluate the roles of adopter, innovation, and dissemination characteristics in TAPP–C adoption and implementation. Results indicate that different factors are important at different diffu- sion stages. Moreover, they suggest that innovation characteristics may be particu- larly important to adoption, whereas adopter and dissemination characteristics may be more influential in implementation. Although the efficacy of several psychological in- terventions for various children’s mental health prob- lems has been established in academic and research laboratories (Kazdin & Weisz, 1998), they are not widely used in community children’s mental health centers. Indeed, this “research–practice gap” in chil- dren’s mental health service has been identified as one of the most pressing issues facing children’s mental health (Kazdin & Kendall, 1998; Webster-Stratton & Taylor, 1998). Clearly, effective, empirically based treatments are limited in value if they are not used by the children’s mental health community at large. Many explanations have been suggested to account for the discrepancy between what is known in the clini- cal research arena and what is used in the practice arena. Current explanations can be grouped into three broad categories: reasons related to the original re- search or innovation itself, explanations related to dis- semination of the innovation, and reasons related to implementation of the innovation in the practice set- ting. Community clinicians perceive clinical research as not relevant to clinical practice (Cicchetti & Toth, 1998), reportedly because of its emphasis on tradi- tional experimental methodology, its highly specified samples (Borkovec & Castonguay, 1998; Garfield, 1996; Goldfried & Wolfe, 1996; Weisz, Donenberg, Han, & Weiss, 1995), and its focus on statistically sig- nificant group differences instead of clinically signifi- cant changes (Borkovec & Castonguay, 1998; Gold- fried & Wolfe, 1998; Jacobson, Follette, & Revenstorf, 1984; Jacobson & Truax, 1991). In addition, research- based interventions may not be perceived as compati- ble with existing clinical practice as they often include aspects of practice that are not perceived to reflect the reality of resource-strapped, individualized, multidis- ciplinary community services (Barlow, Levitt, & Buf- ka, 1999; Borkovec & Castonguay, 1998; Weisz et al., 1995). For example, to replicate previous efficacy find- ings, research-based interventions may require com- prehensive standardized assessments (Sobell, 1996), strict treatment adherence with a fixed number of ses- sions (Goldfried & Wolfe, 1998), or implementation by highly trained psychology staff with research back- grounds (Henggeler, Schoenwald, Liao, Letourneau, & Edwards, 2002). Other explanations for the research–practice gap have focused on the efforts that have been made to dis- Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 2006, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2–12 Copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 2 This study was supported in part by a fellowship awarded to Joanna L. Henderson by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant 752-97-0279) and by a grant awarded to Joanna L. Henderson and Sherri MacKay by the Development and Dissemination Fund of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. We thank C. Root, T. Skilling, and K. Zucker for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence should be addressed to Joanna L. Henderson, Child, Youth, and Family Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 1R8. E-mail: joanna_henderson@camh.net