Process Use

For many years, the evaluation field has been interested in understanding the factors that contribute to the use of evaluation findings. Although much has been learned about these factors, more recent attention has focused on what and how stakeholders learn from their involvement in the evaluation process. Although the extent to which stakeholders are involved in an evaluation varies greatly, many collaborative, participatory, and learning-oriented approaches to evaluation ask stakeholders to help determine the evaluation's purpose and key questions, to carry out various data collection and analysis activities, and to aid in the development of recommendations and action plans. As evaluators have increasingly implemented more collaborative evaluation approaches, they have come to realize that learning from the evaluation may be considered another type of use. ...