Date: Friday, September 25, 2026
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hello! I’m Arthur Hernández, an evaluator and educator whose work focuses on evaluation, community engagement, and the forms of knowledge we authorize as credible.
Evaluators are often asked whether findings are “generalizable.” The question appears technical, but it is also philosophical and ethical. From the standpoint of Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation, or CREE, we should ask not only whether findings travel beyond a setting, but also whose knowledge is being privileged, whose context is being erased, and who benefits from the claim.
Generalizability is rooted largely in positivist and post-positivist traditions. It assumes that knowledge can be strengthened by moving from particular observations to broader claims about populations, settings, or causal relationships. This logic is supported by probability sampling, standardization, measurement, control, and statistical inference. These are valuable tools. But they also carry assumptions: that context can be minimized, that co-variation can be controlled or otherwise managed, and that broad claims are often more valuable than situated understanding.
CREE challenges those assumptions. A CREE perspective begins with the premise that culture is not a variable to be added. Culture shapes the evaluation questions, relationships, instruments, interpretations, uses, and consequences of evaluation. It also shapes what counts as credible evidence. From this view, context is not a threat to validity but necessary for validity.
This is one reason qualitative methodologies are so important in CREE. Qualitative inquiry can help evaluators understand meaning, lived experience, history, identity, language, power, place, implementation conditions, and community priorities. These dimensions are often precisely what must be understood.
Qualitative evaluation is sometimes judged by the wrong standard. When qualitative findings are described as “not generalizable,” the statement may be technically accurate but it can also imply that the work is somehow less rigorous or less useful. That implication is mistaken.
Qualitative evaluation instead supports transferability, applicability, naturalistic generalization, analytic generalization, or contextually grounded use. Lincoln and Guba’s concept of transferability is especially helpful: the evaluator provides rich description so that users can judge whether findings fit another context. Stake’s naturalistic generalization and Patton’s extrapolation similarly recognize that people learn from cases through comparison, experience, pattern recognition, and practical judgment.
CREE adds another requirement: those judgments about transfer and use should not be made only by technical experts. They should include the people most affected by the program and the evaluation. Communities should have meaningful roles in interpreting findings, identifying what is (culturally) valid, and determining whether lessons from one setting can be responsibly applied in another.
Claims of generalizability can unintentionally erase cultural difference, local history, structural inequity, and community knowledge. A CREE stance requires us to examine the power embedded in broad claims.
Culture, place, relationships, and history are not noise or confounders to be controlled away. They are central to understanding whether a program works, for whom, under what conditions, and with what consequences.
In CREE, rigor includes technical adequacy, but it also includes cultural responsiveness, relational accountability, inclusion of marginalized voices, transparency, reflexivity, and attention to use and harm.
Transferability requires ethical judgment. Just because findings from one community appear useful elsewhere does not mean they should be applied without adaptation. Transfer requires careful attention to cultural fit, local priorities, power, and potential unintended consequences.
Evaluators should consider more precise and culturally responsive language:
“These findings are context-specific and may be transferable to settings where communities judge the cultural, historical, and implementation conditions to be sufficiently similar.”
“This case supports analytic learning about the program theory, while requiring local adaptation before use elsewhere.”
“Applicability should be determined with, not merely for, the communities affected by the program.”
CREE requires us to be precise, humble, and accountable. Some evaluations can and should produce broader claims. But many qualitative evaluations are designed for a different kind of contribution: deep understanding, culturally situated meaning, practical wisdom, and responsible use. That contribution is not less rigorous. It is differently rigorous. And for many evaluation purposes, it is exactly the kind of knowledge we need.
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