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Intercultural Training 507

and use of video programmes in different contexts can be found in Fowler and
Mumford (1999). For opportunities to develop CD-Roms and online materials,
see especially Simons and Quappe (2000).

10. Selection criteria for training programs

Since intercultural training courses are based on very different training ap-
proaches, the question of what criteria to use in practice for selecting a training
program is complicated. Scherm (1995), with reference to other studies, regards
three criteria as important:
– Length of the foreign assignment;
– Extent of the interaction in the foreign culture, i.e. frequency and intensity
of contacts to the cultural surroundings;
– Divergence between the host and the home culture (degree of unfamiliarity).
(Scherm 1995: 248, translation by the author).
Black and Mendenhall (1992) also address the question of what criteria
should be used for selecting training programs. They initially establish that up
to now, there is no systematic way of comparing different intercultural training
courses and their characteristics. So they regard the question of how to deter-
mine different forms of training intensity (i.e. ‘rigour’) as central. The intensity
is partly determined by the way in which the training concepts integrate
learners. The learning theory assumption that the level of difficulty of grasping
something is partly dependent on how new or unfamiliar the behavior to be
learned is, is translated into contact with other cultures. Linguistic contrasts and
the previous experience of the parties are also taken into account. Further fac-
tors are the length of the assignment and ‘job novelty’.

11. Effectiveness of intercultural training

The evaluation of training is a broad-based area of research, to which this article
can only make a marginal reference. Problems of evaluating training programs
are described in the first volume of Landis and Brislin’s Handbook of Intercul-
tural Training (1983). There has also been a great deal of literature dealing with
the problem of evaluation since then (see particularly Blake and Heslin 1983;
Kinast 1998: 20–54 for methodological problems; see also Trimpop and Meyn-
hardt 2003; Morris and Robie 2001). Blake and Heslin discuss the following re-
search methods and data sources:
1. self reports;
2. judgments of significant others […];
3. archival/objective measures;