ABSTRACT
The emphasis on cultural competence in practice is equally important in research. The process of improving cultural competence in research is similar to the one social worker employ in practice. The relationship between social worker and the client has its own cultural context, and in research the same occurs with respect to the interface of the researcher and participant particularly with respect to asking and answering questions. If the researcher does not recognize and account for cultural and legal differences concerning prostitution, it likely results in poor research and unusable results. Even if the cultural and legal differences are known, the analysis of results can be ethnocentric and this too can result in biased and non-valid results. The non-Hispanic researcher also needs to recognize that the Hispanic social work researcher may have general knowledge about Hispanic culture but not have knowledge of a specific Hispanic group that could be the target of the study.
