Utilization-Focused Evaluation

Utilization-focused evaluation begins with the premise that evaluations should be judged by their utility and actual use; therefore, evaluators should facilitate the evaluation process and design any evaluation with careful consideration for how everything that is done, from beginning to end, will affect use. Utilization-focused evaluation is concerned with how real people in the real world apply evaluation findings and experience the evaluation process. The goal of utilization-focused evaluation is intended use (of the evaluation results) by intended users.

In any given evaluation, there are many potential stakeholders and an array of possible uses for the evaluation's findings. Utilization-focused evaluation requires moving from the passive notion of informing an audience to the active concept of working with intended users to meet their evaluative information needs. This means identifying specific primary intended users and their explicit commitments to concrete, specific uses. The evaluator facilitates judgment and decision making by intended users rather than acting solely as a distant, independent judge. Utilization-focused evaluation operates from the premise that evaluation use is too important to be merely hoped for or assumed. Use must be planned for and facilitated.

The utilization-focused evaluator develops a working relationship with intended users to help them determine what kind of evaluation they need. This requires negotiation in which the evaluator offers a menu of possibilities. Utilization-focused evaluation does not depend on or advocate any particular evaluation content, model, method, theory, or even use. Rather, it is a process for helping primary intended users select the most appropriate content, model, methods, theory, and uses for their particular situation. As the entries in this encyclopedia demonstrate, many options are now available in the feast that has become the field of evaluation. In considering the rich and varied menu of evaluation, utilization-focused evaluation can include any evaluative purpose, any kind of data, any kind of design, and any kind of focus. Utilization-focused evaluation is a process for making decisions about these issues in collaboration with an identified group of primary users, focusing on their intended uses of evaluation.

A psychology of use undergirds and informs utilization-focused evaluation. Research on use shows that intended users are more likely to use evaluations if they understand and feel ownership of the evaluation process and findings; they are more likely to understand and feel ownership if they have been actively involved; and by actively involving primary intended users, the evaluator is training users in use, preparing the groundwork for use, and reinforcing the intended utility of the evaluation every step along the way.