The Program Evaluation Standards in International Settings

16 Sandy TautU5 Report Clarity Evaluation reports should clearly describe the program beingevaluated, including its context, and the purposes, procedures, and findings of theevaluation, so that essential information is provided and easily understood.The fifth Utility Standard U5, Report Clarity, generally seems culturally universal but theconcept of clarity touches upon a cross-culturally relevant communication style issue. TheStandard states that “[…] clarity refers to explicit and unencumbered narrative, illustrations, anddescriptions” (Joint Committee, 1994, p. 49). This might be contraindicated in some cultureswhere indirect communication is the socially accepted way to exchange ideas and to makestatements. Barnlund (1975) contends that “the greater the cultural homogeneity [collectivism],the greater the meaning conveyed in a single word, the more that can be implied rather thanstated” (in: Berry et al., 1997, Vol. 3, p. 141). Jang (2000, p. 22) notes that in South Korea,public argumentation is “actively shunned because engaging in it means to stand out, risk publicdisagreement, and lose favor […].” In addition, context information will have a different impacton the interpretations of given information. In collectivist cultures, the greater interdependenceorients people toward greater sensitivity to context information and more meaning is drawn fromit. In contrast, individualistic cultures, which are regarded as low-context cultures, place a greateremphasis on dispositional attributions (Berry et al., 1997, Vol. 3, chapter 1, p. 26).U6 Report Timeliness and Dissemination Significant interim findings andevaluation reports should be disseminated to intended users, so that they can be usedin a timely fashion.Standard U6, Report Timeliness and Dissemination, calls for report dissemination to “allintended users” (Joint Committee, 1994, p. 53). Reaching all stakeholders is not a goal if theclient expects absolute authority over the evaluation and sole reception of evaluation findings.Jang (2000, p. 24f) argues that in South Korea, the responsibility of the evaluator is limited to“reporting to the top client” and that the top client decides about “the extent to which evaluationresults are shared.” Consequently, the practice of “failing to recognize stakeholders who do nothave spokespersons” (Joint Committee, 1994, p. 55, labeled as a Common Error) might beacceptable conduct in nonegalitarian cultures. Another culturally varying concept is that oftimeliness. It is not a universal value and might therefore be excluded as part of proper conductfor evaluators in certain cultures. For example, “Africans have different concept of time thanWestern audiences” (Russon & Patel, 1999, p. 6; also see Jang, 2000, p. 25; Smith et al., 1994, p.11).