• Corpus ID: 2454414

STRATEGIES THAT ADDRESS CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE EVALUATION 7 . A GUIDE TO CONDUCTING CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE EVALUATIONS

@inproceedings{FriersonSTRATEGIESTA,
  title={STRATEGIES THAT ADDRESS CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE EVALUATION 7 . A GUIDE TO CONDUCTING CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE EVALUATIONS},
  author={Henry T. Frierson and Stafford Hood}
}

• H. Frierson, Stafford Hood
• Sociology

Cultural responsiveness is gaining recognition as a critical feature of the evaluation process. Culture is a cumulative body of learned and shared behavior, values, customs, and beliefs common to a particular group or society. In essence, culture makes us who we are. In doing project evaluation, it is also important to consider cultural context in which the project operates and be responsive to it. How can an evaluation be culturally responsive? An evaluation is culturally responsive if it fully takes into account the culture of the program that is being evaluated. In other words, the evaluation is based on an examination of impacts through lenses in which the culture of the participants is considered an important factor, thus rejecting the notion that assessments must be objective and culture free, if they are to be unbiased. Moreover, a culturally responsive evaluation attempts to fully describe and explain the context of the program or project being evaluated. Culturally responsive evaluators honor the cultural context in which an evaluation takes place by bringing needed, shared life experience and understandings to the evaluation tasks at hand. Why should a project director be concerned with the cultural context of a program undergoing evaluation? Simply put, as American society becomes increasingly diverse racially, ethnically, and linguistically, it is important that program designers, implementers, and evaluators understand the cultural contexts in which these programs operate. To ignore the reality of the existence of the influence of culture and to be unresponsive to the needs of the target population is to put the program in danger of being ineffective and to put the evaluation in danger of being seriously flawed. Being sensitive and responsive to the culture of the participants and the cultural environment in which the programs exists is a process that should be an important component of program evaluation. Fortunately, cultural responsiveness as it relates to evaluation is gaining recognition IV Section Evaluation is based on an examination of impacts through lenses in which the culture of the participants is considered an important factor.