Chapter 5: Persuasive Language, Responsive Design: A Framework for Interculturally Responsive Evaluation

Ensuring standards of good practice among evaluators working in culturally diverse communities is a high priority for the evaluation field in the 21st century. Given our nation’s expanding societal diversity, it is essential that those who study the effectiveness of organizations, programs, policies, or personnel be mindful of ways in which evaluation theory and practices must account for cultural context. Failure to understand how cultural context interacts with program implementation and impact jeopardizes the validity of the evaluation. In the worst case, spurious conclusions may be drawn that unfairly affect access to resources. One can only conclude that there are both ethical and validity concerns that make it mandatory for all evaluators to learn about cultural context. Culture and cultural diversity influence every context, not only those that spring to mind, such as large urban settings. It is a matter of surfacing the culture-based assumptions of both those being evaluated and those doing the evaluation.