Development and Validation of the Cultural Competence of Program Evaluators (CCPE) Scale

As part of its Guiding Principles for Evaluators, the American Evaluation Association (AEA) requires that evaluators develop cultural competencies, yet no measure of cultural competence currently exists in the field. Using items from cultural competence measures used in fields such as counseling and nursing, in conjunction with the creation of qualitative questions, the researcher developed the Cultural Competence of Program Evaluators (CCPE) scale. The main goal of this study was to validate the CCPE, and a subsidiary goal was to assess differences in level of cultural competence among program evaluators based on various demographic variables such as minority status, age, sex, years of experience, and receipt of cultural competence training. The sample consisted of 174 program evaluators. Principal components analyses revealed five factors of the CCPE: cultural knowledge, cultural skills, cultural awareness, cultural recognition, and cultural responsiveness, which exhibited an alpha of .85, and convergent validity of the CCPE was established via significant positive correlations between the CCPE and Multicultural Counseling Inventory (MCI). Additionally, individuals who had received cultural competence training scored significantly higher on the CCPE, and receipt of cultural competence training was a significant predictor of scores on the CCPE. Implications of these results, limitations of the current study, and suggestions for future research are discussed