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 ...