Culturally Competent Evaluation for Aboriginal Communities: A Review of the Empirical Literature

uch of program evaluation is concerned with understanding and improving social programs so that they are ultimately more responsive and more reflective of program participant needs. At the same time, these programs exist and are embedded within specific social, cultural and historical contexts which impact program development, implementation, and eventual outcomes. Evaluations that attempt to address responsiveness to contextual and cultural specificity are often referred to as culturally competent, culturally responsive, inclusive, multicultural, or cross-cultural, among other terms. While there are no agreed upon terminologies, definitions, or even methodologies, what these approaches all share is the recognition that culture and context matter, and that there are no universally agreed upon rules or abstractions that can be applicable in all contexts (Guba & Lincoln, 2005). The recognition of culture and context thus becomes “an explicit criterion rather than an unspoken expectation” (SenGupta, Hopson, & Thompson-Robinson, 2004, p. 15) in evaluations of this type. Although culturally competent evaluation has been historically and largely influenced by international cross-cultural evaluations (Hopson, 2003) conducted in developing countries, the growing disparities and increasingly multiracial and multicultural contexts in Canada and the United States is adding to the knowledge base as well. Despite the fact that researchers and evaluators have been working in diverse communities for many years, the specific focus on culture and cultural context in evaluation is nonetheless a more recent phenomenon. Evaluators contributing to the 1985 edition of New Directions for Program Evaluation (edited by Patton) for the first time asked how culture and cultural context might impact program evaluation (Hopson, 2003). Almost a decade later, Karen Kirkhart’s presidential address at the 1994 American Evaluation Association conference asked that evaluators explore multicultural influences on their work. More recently, the American Evaluation Association formed a Task Force to review the Program Evaluation Standards of the Joint Committee from a culturally competent perspective. After significant input from numerous evaluation scholars and practitioners, recommendations were approved for future revisions to the Program Evaluation Standards (American Evaluation Association, Diversity Committee, 2004). At the same time, program evaluation has greatly benefited from the active academic and practical interest in cultural competence in public and mental health and in social work (Lum, 2003; Sue & Sue, 1999).