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In social work research, cultural competence means knowing how cultural factors have meaning for different aspects of the research process. This begins with the research question. Does it adequately reflect culture? People from a certain culture may have perceptions that differ, and they may accept a given type of service in a different way. If you are evaluating a program, you should ask if there is evidence that this program is effective with people of different cultures. You can also examine whether it is logical to assert that it would be effective with people of this culture, given what you know about this culture.

Cultural competence is reflected in the selection of your study sample. Is there adequate representation of persons of different cultures? If not, you will have a problem with the generalization of your findings to people of various cultures. In other words, you should not assume that your results will likely be achieved with members of the missing cultures.

Measurement of study variables is another task where culture is important. What tools will you use for this task? How bound are the words on your tools to a specific culture? Different words may have different meanings for people based on their culture.

When you analyze your data, you can examine cultural variables to see if people of different cultures were different regarding the variables in your study. Perhaps people of a certain culture did not achieve a significant gain in anxiety when given your treatment program, but people of other cultures did achieve a significant gain. Without this analysis, you would not know of this differential effect of your treatment.

Sometimes you will have immigrants in your caseload. A variable to include in your analysis is the length of time an immigrant has lived in this country. Those who have recently arrived may be different from those with many years of experience here.