The Benchmarking Strategy Has a Role to Play Across Cultures

This article responds to the commentary by Cardemil (2015) on our original article (Spilka & Dobson, 2015), in which we proposed the use of a benchmarking strategy to evaluate culturally adapted and transported treatments. We address Cardemil's assertion that a culturally embedded or bottom-up approach to the development of models of psychopathology and treatment of disorders is optimal and argue that benchmarking provides an alternative model in which treatments may also be developed in one culture and exported, with appropriate adaptation and evaluation, to another. We discuss the circumstances in which benchmarking is likely to have enhanced benefit and argue that this issue should be addressed with research and evidence as part of the global efforts toward evidence-based practice.