With the increase in equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts in our institutions and in our personal professional development pursuits, the question, Where do I begin? often arises.
Having an instrument like the Intercultural Development Inventory, or IDI, provides the opportunity to understand cultural competence and is a proven tool used to measure one’s capacity to recognize and navigate cultural differences with greater levels of complexity. This developmental approach pays particular attention to the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities.
What is the Intercultural Development (IDI)?
Intercultural competence has been identified as a critical capability in a number of studies focusing on overseas effectiveness of international sojourners, international business adaptation and job performance, international student adjustment, international transfer of technology and information, international study abroad and inter-ethnic relations within nations. The Intercultural Development Inventory is a 50-item questionnaire, available online that can be completed in 15–20 minutes.
What does the IDI assess?
The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) is the premier cross-cultural assessment of intercultural competence that is used by thousands of individuals and organizations to build intercultural competence to achieve international and domestic diversity and inclusion goals and outcomes. IDI research in organizations and educational institutions confirms two central findings when using the IDI:
Interculturally competent behavior occurs at a level supported by the individual’s or group’s underlying orientation as assessed by the IDI.
Training and leadership development efforts at building intercultural competence are more successful when they are based on the individual’s or group’s underlying developmental orientation as assessed by the IDI.
In contrast to many “personal characteristic” instruments, the IDI is a cross-culturally valid, reliable, and generalizable measure of intercultural competence along the validated intercultural development continuum (adapted, based on IDI research, from the DMIS theory developed by Milton Bennett). Further, the IDI has been demonstrated, through research, to have high predictive validity to both bottom-line cross-cultural outcomes in organizations and intercultural goal accomplishments in education.
Why the IDI?
There are many assessment tools that claim to measure intercultural competence, cultural intelligence, global effectiveness, and cross-cultural adaptation. These instruments are not grounded in a comprehensive, cross-culturally validated theory of intercultural competence. Rather, these assessment tools measure individual, discrete Cognitive/Affective/Behavioral (CAB) concepts (e.g., flexibility) that are found in research to be weakly related—if at all—to critical outcomes of intercultural contact, such as goal accomplishment in culturally diverse settings. Further, there is no research-based consensus on what specific CAB characteristics are actually most critical for effectively navigating cultural differences.
How do I use the IDI?
This tool is great when used in conjunction with in-depth intercultural training. The IDI helps you identify where you or your organization are on a continuum, and what areas to focus and work on regarding your own intercultural development.
What types of groups or individuals do you work with?
Corporations, Non-profit organizations, higher education, primary and secondary institutional leadership, governmental organization. Each group will determine their own goals and needs, which we will take time to discuss prior to administering the assessment. Reliability analysis of the IDI indicates that the assessment is appropriate to use with high school students, approximately 15 years and older.
How do I get started?
To begin the process of taking the IDI for yourself or organization, let’s chat about your goals for intercultural development and understanding.