DUE IN 3 HOURS
Guided Response: Consider investigating how your peers might frame their questions for their evaluation to be culturally responsive. Additionally, dig deeper with responding to a peer to determine what role or roles stakeholders play in culturally responsive evaluations?
LASHANTA’S POST:
Program Planning, Research, and Cultural Context
Culture is crucial for program modification and planning due to its influence on the participants. It referrers to accumulatively shared and learned values, customs, values, and beliefs within the society (Frierson et al., 2002). Any program must be based on the type of cultures that the community upholds and the impacts the program may have on the community members. Culture-based evaluation is important since it identifies specific cultures that must be avoided and benefit the program positively. Frierson et al. (2002) notes that ignoring cultures during project evaluation and modification puts the project in danger as well as the targeted population. It is recommendable for the researchers to be responsive and sensitive to the targeted population’s culture to avoid flaws and make the program recognizable. Notably, culture is important since most values and norms are promoted through social activities, which is detrimental to the community once ignored.
Program evaluation heavily relies on the cultural context and targeted population. In evaluating the program based on its omission or inclusion of the cultural context, the focus would be on how values, norms, and behaviors are integrated. The program will be evaluated as culture inclusive if it takes into account the cultural activities of the participants. According to Grinnell et al. (2015), culturally responsive evaluation is vital for community inclusion and increased outcomes. However, a culture-free program stresses social activities without necessarily integrating the norms and societal values. The program’s culture must be taken into consideration for a responsive culture evaluation (Grinnell et al., 2015). It also explains or fully describes the context of the program. A responsive culture evaluation integrates different multiethnic evaluation teams that include the voices of the underrepresented individuals in society. Therefore, a program must incorporate culture for it to be effective.
References:
Frierson, H. T., Hood, S., & Hughes, G. (2002). Strategies that address culturally responsive evaluation. https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02057/nsf02057_5.pdf (Links to an external site.)
Grinnell, R. M., Gabor, P. A., & Unrau, Y. A. (Eds.). (2015). Program evaluation for social workers: Foundations of evidence-based programs. Oxford University Press, USA.
LESLEY’S POST:
“Culture” is not only a big word but it carries with it so much weight. To understand the importance of culture in research, one must understand that to each of us, culture will hold different meanings and values and much be understand that different does not mean bad, or wrong. Fierson, Hood, and Hughes (2002) expressed this importance as explaining the context of research being evaluated. Without such descriptions and understanding of the culture being studied, there is no practical reasoning behind the study or assessment.
“There is also the potential to do great harm if these contextual considerations are not recognized” (Netting, O’Conner, and Faurie, 2008, p. 215). In order to understand the reason for a program, one must understand the culture. For example, my research is based on the care of elderly people. In some cultures, there is no need for assisted living facilities because it is not only customary, it is expected that families tend to their own elders (Reno Valley Assisted Living & Retirement Center, 2020). Considering this, one might evaluate my research by the culture in which is being examined by whether to gauge if and how the elderly is being either neglected or abused. If there is a lack of cultural context, the validity, and integrity would be compromised.
Ways in which I will need to address cultural context is to examine my own culture versus the cultures in the research literature and examine any differences and/or exceptions. As of now, I do know that there are mixed cultural backgrounds in some of the literature I have researched and will need to address those differences.
Reference
Fierson, H. T., Hood, S., & Hughes, G. B. (2002). Section IV: Strategies that address culturally responsive evaluation (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.). In J. F. Westat (Ed.), The 2002 User-Friendly Handbook for Project Evaluation (pp. 63–73). http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02057/nsf02057_5.pdf (Links to an external site.)
Netting, F. E., O’Conner, M. K., & Fauri, D. P. (2008). Comparative approaches to program planning. Wiley.
Reno Valley Assisted Living & Retirement Center. (2020, July 13). How Different Cultures Treat Aging. Reno Valley Assisted Living & Retirement Center. https://www.renovalleyseniorliving.com/blog/how-different-cultures-treat-aging/.
