Transcultural knowledge and skills transfer: issues arising from evaluation processes

The transfer of knowledge, policy and practice between nations increasingly involves knowledge of the theory and practice of evaluation. This article examines issues arising from the transcultural evaluation of a drug and alcohol misuse knowledge and skills transfer programme for nurses, nurse teachers and medical staff in the narcology service in St Petersburg, Russia that ran between 1995 and 2004. The programme is contextualized and described prior to an account of the evaluation activities. Issues arising from the evaluation process are discussed, including ethnocentricity, cultural biases and the local generation of meaning, and the use of interpreters in interviewing and transcription The article suggests that undertaking transcultural evaluations enables more sensitive and effective domestic evaluations and that the approaches to evaluation favoured by Western funding agencies encourage ethnocentricism. The paper concludes with a recommendation for enhancing transcultural evaluations by setting them within a conceptual framework that facilitates the analysis of policy and practice 'borrowing' and transfer.