Cultural Competence in Evaluation | Resources
Cultural Competence may be defined as:
Despite recent efforts in a number of disciplines to address issues of culture, the evaluation field has lagged behind. Yet culture is an integral part of evaluation. Culture is present in evaluation in design, approach, implementation, and methods. A common thread between culture and evaluation is values, and since culture shapes values, beliefs, and worldviews, evaluation is basically an attempt to determine values, merit, and worth.
Culture is the embodiment of a world view transmitted through beliefs, values, and practices, including religious and spiritual traditions. It encompasses a way of living informed by the sum of forces acting on a group.
Understanding these underlying dimensions of culture leads to recognizing value differences and value conflicts. These go beyond simple demographics to include intergenerational, socioeconomic, and other group characteristics.
In the following table, Lee (1997) provides an example of how cultural differences lead to value contrasts.
|Eastern Agricultural System: Values
of Traditional Society
|Western Industrialized System: Values
of Modern Society
|Family and group oriented||Individual orientation|
|Extended family||Nuclear or blended family|
|Multiple parenting||Couple parenting|
|Primary relationship: parent-child bond||Primary relationship, marital bond|
|Emphasis on interpersonal relationships||Emphasis on self-fulfillment and self-development|
|Status and relationships determined by age and role in family||Status achieved by individual’s efforts|
|Well-defined family member roles||Flexible family member roles|
|Favoritism toward males||Increasing opportunities for females|
|Authoritarian orientation||Democratic orientation|
|Suppression of emotions||Expression of emotions|
|Fatalism, karma||Personal control over the environment|
|Harmony with nature||Mastery over nature|
|Cooperative orientation||Competitive orientation|
|Spiritualism||Materialism and consumerism|
|Past, present, and future orientations||Present and future orientations|