Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Hello AEA365, I am Art Hernandez, PhD, a longtime scholar and evaluator, strongly interested in the development and use of Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) and community member of Expanding the Bench® (ETB). Here, I briefly share my reflection on CREE which challenges narrow definitions of rigor and shows how CREE unites precision, culture, and ethics in meaningful practice.
CREE is an evaluation paradigm that conceptualizes evaluation as a collaborative learning process in which meaning is co-constructed. CREE recognizes what is measured, how it is measured, and what “results” are selected and how they are interpreted is shaped by history, current conditions, context, and power relations. Failing to account for these factors produces findings that may be “precise” or “accurate” yet substantively misleading or unusable.
CREE achieves technical superiority over traditional evaluation models by expanding the concept of rigor beyond narrow empirical criteria. Conventional approaches typically privilege internal validity and rely on the assumption that causal relationships in human activity are lawful and generalizable. They depend on assumptions of universality in constructs, measures, and theories of change, which frequently lead to systematic error (i.e., bias) when applied to different groups within and across populations. Traditional models usually treat programs as static entities and overlook the complex, adaptive, and context-dependent nature of community culture where they are deployed. Evaluations produced under traditional approaches, while methodologically sophisticated by their own standards, often become mechanistic and reductionist, often and ultimately disconnected from the lived realities and priorities of the very participants they intend to represent.
Instead, CREE focuses on embedding community and contextual validity into evaluation. Accuracy is not simply precision, but the degree to which findings authentically represent the values, perspectives and experiences of participants. Validity is established through co-creation of constructs, measures, and interpretations, ensuring the knowledge generated is meaningful and relevant to those most affected. Authenticity is achieved by centering involved participants’ experience, especially from whom and about whom the evaluation information pertains. This approach recognizes that evaluation results are not neutral facts but socially constructed interpretations and judgments about value that gain credibility through trust, transparency, and ethical engagement.
CREE treats evaluation as a learning process that privileges capacity building and growth rather than as an accounting mechanism for determining “impact.” By doing so, CREE addresses the philosophical misalignment inherent in models that conflate rigor with objectivity and causal generalizability, offering instead a framework for producing evaluations that are both methodologically sound and socially meaningful. Engaging all involved participants as co-learners, generates knowledge that is contextually grounded, culturally meaningful, and responsive to evolving community and program realities.
CREE’s technical superiority lies in its ability to produce evaluations that are simultaneously rigorous and relevant. It generates context-sensitive, involved participant-driven knowledge that enhances collective learning and promotes meaningful change. In this way, CREE advances evaluation as a process of discovery and capacity building rather than an external audit of program performance. By acknowledging that knowledge production is shaped by power dynamics and by respecting multiple epistemologies, CREE expands the intellectual and ethical foundations of evaluation practice. The result is an approach that integrates methodological rigor with cultural and ethical rigor, producing findings that are both more technically robust and contextually relevant than other approaches.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Expanding The Bench® week. Expanding the Bench® is an initiative committed to diversifying evaluation and elevating culturally responsive and equitable evaluation. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from partners of Expanding The Bench®. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.