Proposing an identity-in-context framework for culturally responsive evaluation

Evaluation exists within social, cultural, environmental, and economic contexts defined by human experience. Taking an identity-oriented, culturally responsive approach to evaluation highlights the consequences of evaluation and how they relate to the social reality and context of priority populations. This article presents a conceptual framework for culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) practice using identity as an orienting construct. The Identity-in-Context Framework (ICF) can help evaluators and practitioners be cognizant of cultural implications for practice and explore how identity intersects with cultural, social, economic, geographic, and structural forces impacting communities around the world. The ICF integrates personal identity, structure, history, and discourse to understand identity formation processes that can enhance the social sustainability of behavior-change focused programming. When promoting behavior change, practitioners are encouraged to use CRE through an ICF framework to align behavior change programs more responsively with communities' sociocultural worldviews to mitigate unintended consequences of program implementation, including attrition, maintenance of the status quo, and failing to account for systemic causes of underlying issues.