The Program Evaluation Standards in International Settings

Considerations on the Development of Culturally Relevant Evaluation Standards 39standards is likely to be more problematic between the U.S. and India or Malta, than between theU.S. and, say, Germany.But as we have tried to point out, the use of the Joint Committee (1981) standards in non-U.S. settings is more than an issue of technology transfer. The concept of standards as employedin the U.S. is much less relevant within the Maltese and Indian traditional cultures. Althoughstandards may be imposed (or “transferred”) from the outside, indigenous are unlikely toemerge.We have raised several issues about the cultural relevance of the Joint Committee (1981)standards, indeed about any set of professional standards developed for use within a particularculture. We have suggested that in some cases they may be modified to guide U.S. evaluators inadhering to U.S. standards when conducting effective, culturally sensitive evaluations in non-U.S. settings. We have also argued that neither these standards, nor in fact any similar kinds ofstandards, are likely to either arise or be seen as useful in indigenous evaluation in cultures suchas Malta and India. these observations lead us to caution U.S. evaluation instructors to morecarefully discuss the limited application of the Joint Committee (1981) standards in internationalwork, and to be especially careful in advocating the use of these standards to internationalstudents who will be conducting indigenous evaluations in their native countries. As Asamoah(1988) has pointed out, parochial, western views of evaluation have resulted in western-trainedindigenous evaluators being more insensitive to local culture than even outsiders. We hope thatthe foregoing discussion will contribute to more thoughtful application of the Joint Committee(1981) standards in international contexts.