ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of culture in evaluation. It also discusses the challenges of addressing issues of culture, noting the wide number of definitions of the concept of culture at play and the long-standing debates about the role and nature of culture generally. The chapter also discusses the ideas of independence and its aims, and the various forms of bias in evaluation. It then considers factors affecting independence, including the culture of the organization. With this framework, the chapter then discusses practices to enhance evaluation independence in an organization, for evaluation studies, for self-evaluation activities, and for evaluators. It takes a broad scope of what independence can refer to in evaluation: independent evaluators, independent evaluation units, and/or independent reviewers/observers. The chapter focuses on practices directly strengthening independence. Independence will not ensure a quality, biased-free evaluation, but can greatly enhance the likelihood for such evaluations. The absence of independence will almost certainly result in an evaluation of poor quality.
