ABSTRACT
At a very first level, evaluators need to be sensitive to concerns about racism and stigma. A group’s concerns about racism, and/or about labelling, need to be discussed openly before evaluation commences, and concerns arising during it are incorporated into the evaluation process. Similarly, evaluators must be sensitive to gender issues, for example in language, in activities (such as participating in interviews), and in the community-representation roles thought to be appropriate. Second, if materials have to be culturally acceptable, so do the evaluation questions asked. Evaluators are dependent on cultural informants, and getting to know and be able to work with cultural informants also takes time and experience. Field work is essential to thoroughly test interview guides, questionnaires and the like, in order to assure that items are acceptable and understood. In case of doubt detailed information may have to be sacrificed for cultural and political acceptability: in a Swiss study concerning people researchers did not want to risk offending: for instance, we refrained from asking about lifetime number of sexual partners, and simply asked if the respondent had ever had more than one partner.
