Key Ideas

• Culture and cultural context are viewed as essential components of a culturally responsive evaluation. A certain level of cultural competence is necessary to successfully conduct evaluations within majority African American settings.
• Notions of logic models rarely position culture and context as important elements in program theory, development, implementation, or evaluation.
• The African American Culturally Responsive Evaluation System for Academic Settings (ACESAS) is a logic model proposed to visually represent the key steps used when implementing culturally responsive evaluation in majority African American communities and with majority African American populations.
• The steps of the ACESAS logic model are based on select approaches of culturally responsive evaluation and the practical application of those theories in recent literature.
• The steps of the ACESAS logic model include an examination of the cultural and sociopolitical assumptions underpinning the scope of the evaluation, a contextual analysis, establishment of the culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) team, an inventory of CRE team resources, the implementation of the CRE action steps, the creation of CRE products, and an indication of the influence and impact of the evaluation on the cultural group.
• Although the ACESAS logic model was created to address how evaluations are handled in majority African American settings, the steps presented in the ACESAS can be generalized to other settings and used by other evaluators across professional fields who evaluate services and programs with similar populations.

Evaluations are conducted to provide program operators with information about the success of their particular program with reaching its goals (see Chapter Thirteen). Program operators are increasingly held accountable by funders (government organizations, private foundations, corporate and nonprofit boards, as well as individuals) to provide cost-effective programs whose outcomes ultimately have a significant impact on the “bottom line” (which could be capital in the form of people or income). Evaluations may be qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods (using both qualitative and quantitative approaches) to gather information and analyze data about a given program.

Within the last decade culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) has emerged as a key methodological approach within the field of evaluation with the potential to address critically important concerns pertaining to how evaluations are conducted, as well as the interpretation and use of results for marginalized groups whose culture has historically been viewed as inconsequential within the context of an evaluation (Hopson, 2003, 2009). The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a visual framework called a logic model that represents the stages of an evaluation. This logic model expands on the theory and practice of CRE in the field of evaluation and enhances the ability of CRE to advance areas of social justice, which attends in part to the equitable distribution of opportunities and resources among marginalized cultural groups.

One advocate for social and political equity was Asa Hilliard (1933–2007). The acronym for the logic model (ACESAS) presented in this chapter is a homophone of the possessive noun Asa's in honor of his efforts to foster educational and social mobility for African American youth. We contend that our proposed logic model identifies critically important steps for conducting culturally responsive evaluations within African American communities. This logic model further delineates a level of uniformity as to what it means to be a culturally responsive evaluator and how one proceeds when conducting culturally responsive evaluations in majority African American communities or with majority African American participants. It is believed that this logic model will at least further the dialogue on CRE, particularly in regard to working with populations in which there are cultural power differentials at work.

Before introducing the African American Culturally Responsive Evaluation System and providing a detailed explanation of the logic model that we believe best reflects CRE, and prior to operationalizing the views of an increasing number of evaluators who maintain that culture is a central consideration in evaluation, we will begin with the following discussions:

1. We will differentiate culture from race and identify the implications of these terms within the context of the African American experience.
2. We will define culturally responsive evaluation and its relevance when conducting evaluations in African American communities.
3. We will summarize the purpose and use of logic models in evaluation studies and their use in planning evaluations in cultural minority communities.