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Developing Culturally Appropriate Needs Assessments and Planning 141

results); however, as Green and Kreuter (2005) recommend, qualitative information
should also be collected whenever possible because it can provide insights into the
experiences and perceptions of the program participants and other relevant stakehold-
ers, insights that quantitative information does not provide. In the nutrition education
program described earlier, for example, evaluators learned about the program ’ s unin-
tended outcomes only because they had collected qualitative information about the
participants ’ perceived benefits from the program.

The selection of methods for collecting the information depends on several fac-
tors: (1) the type of information to be collected; (2) the cultural values, capabilities,
and availability of those who are being asked to provide the information; and (3) the
time, resources, and expertise that evaluators have to process and analyze the informa-
tion (Taylor - Powell et al., 1996). For instance, a health educator who is implementing
a one - year program that aims to teach parenting skills to a group of indigenous farm-

worker migrants who are mostly illiterate may find that rather than conducting pre -
and posttests that ask how many books they read per week to their children, it will be
more appropriate to evaluate the success of this program by assessing it through face -
to - face interviews with program participants and other family members and by asking,
for example, whether parents are practicing their ancestral custom of storytelling with
their children. It will also be important to conduct the interviews in the primary lan-
guage of the target population and to use as interviewers people who are trusted by this
community, such as community leaders or migrant liaisons. It will also be important
when planning the interviews to consider using mostly open - ended questions, which
will allow the interviews to obtain more in - depth information, and to conduct the
interviews at locations and times appropriate for the target population. For these indig-
enous farmworkers it will be most appropriate to interview them in the evenings, or
during other times when there is no farmwork, and preferably in their homes, where
they can feel comfortable.
When working with culturally diverse groups it is better to be creative and to
experiment with various methods than to rely only on the typical pre - and posttests
and surveys. According to California evaluation consultant C. Mendoza (personal
communication, February 24, 2007) information collection methods such as direct
observation, focus groups, and interviews are better than other methods when the tar-
get population is illiterate or has low levels of education. However, she also warns that
it is important when using these methods to ensure that the people collecting the infor-
mation understand the culture of and speak the same language as the target population.
One way to do this, as described earlier, is by involving persons from the target popu-
lation in the evaluation process, people such as community leaders who are well
known and respected. Another advantage of following this approach is that it allows
health education professionals to gain the trust of the target community, a factor that is
crucial when working with minority populations made up of indigenous people or
Southeast Asians, because they do not open up easily to foreigners.
Most experts in evaluation methods recommend that evaluation planners save
time and resources at the outset by conducting a literature review to identify tools that
have already been used with populations similar to the planners ’ target population.

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