What Utilization-Focused Evaluation Is, And Why It Matters

by Michael Quinn Patton and Charmagne E. Campbell-Patton

This new 5th edition of Utilization-Focused Evaluation synthesizes 50 years of research and practitioner wisdom about how to make evaluations useful. We all evaluate. We each do it every day when we decide what to wear or how to prioritize the various tasks that lay before us. The evaluation profession has developed systematic methods and approaches that can be used to inform judgments and decisions about programs and initiatives of all kinds. Because making judgments and decisions is involved in everything people do, evaluation is important in every discipline, field, profession, and sector, including government, businesses, and not-for-profit organizations. Program evaluation is a specialized application of evaluative thinking and methods.

For a discount when ordering from SAGE Publishing, use this code: MSPACEQ222.

Evaluation is rooted in inquiry.

Questions are the backbone of any evaluation. So to introduce you to utilization-focused evaluation, we will begin at the beginning with the questions that make up the foundation of any good story: What? Why? When? How? Where? and Who?

What is Utilization-Focused Evaluation?

Utilization-focused evaluation (U-FE) begins with the premise that evaluations should be judged by their utility and actual use.  U-FE is a comprehensive decision framework for designing and implementing an evaluation to fit a particular situation and, in that situation, meeting the information needs of primary intended users to enhance their intended uses of the evaluation. U-FE is done for and with specific primary intended users for specific, intended uses. Utilization-focused evaluation (U-FE) aims to support effective action and informed decision-making based on meaningful evidence, thoughtful interpretation, and engaged deliberation. Use concerns how real people in the real world experience the evaluation process and apply evaluation findings.

Why U-FE?

Informing action and supporting evidence-based decision-making is how evaluation contributes to a better world. But generating findings is one thing. Using findings is quite another matter. A great many evaluations are not used or are under-utilized. Organizations and programs are drowning in evaluation evidence, but often fail to use findings effectively to improve results and inform decisions. Bridging the gap between generating and using evidence is what utilization-focused evaluation is all about.

Independent scholarly reviews of 50 years of research on evaluation consistently find that utilization-focused evaluation provides the most fully developed theory explaining how to enhance use and is rated as most influential by evaluation practitioners. U-FE is the basis for the evaluation approach taken by the Centers for Disease Control, major philanthropic foundations, and international initiatives like the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a collaboration of some thirty philanthropic foundations from four continents. A substantial body of research supports the premises and principles of utilization-focused evaluation.

How is U-FE done?

U-FE enhances use by facilitating the evaluation process and designing any evaluation with careful consideration for how everything that is done, from beginning to end, will affect use. U-FE provides systematic, research-based guidance and a set of principles for deciding what approach to evaluation is most appropriate for a particular situation and specific primary intended users. U-FE is pragmatic and eclectic so the U-FE toolkit encompasses every evaluation option methodologically, conceptually, theoretically, analytically, and process- wise. Evaluation theorists, methodologists, and practitioners have generated an extensive, even daunting, menu of options to meet particular evaluation needs and demands, any of which can be made utilization- focused. U-FE doesn’t prescribe what particular evaluation methods or approach to adopt but rather prescribes a process for determining how to conduct any evaluation with unwavering attention to intended uses by intended users. Part II of this book presents principles-based guidance on how to conduct a utilization-focused evaluation.

U-FE involves engaging with primary intended users to meet their information and decision-making needs. This may lead to conducting an evaluation asking common questions and using well-established methods, measurements, and procedures, but it may also lead to innovative and customized approaches. We illuminate the “how” of utilization-focused evaluation throughout the book.

Who is U-FE for?

In any evaluation, there are many potential stakeholders and an array of possible uses. Utilization-focused evaluation requires moving from the general and abstract, from possible audiences and potential uses, to the real and specific: actual primary intended users and their explicit commitments to concrete, specific uses. The evaluator facilitates judgment and decision making by primary intended users. Since no evaluation can be value-free, utilization-focused evaluation answers the question of whose values will frame the evaluation by working with clearly identified, primary intended users who have responsibility to apply evaluation findings and implement recommendations. In essence, evaluation use is too important to be left to evaluators. U-FE is personal and situational. The evaluation facilitator develops a working relationship with intended users to help them determine what kind of evaluation they need.

A psychology of use undergirds and informs utilization-focused evaluation. In essence, research 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’ve 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.

When is U-FE done?

U-FE begins at the beginning of an evaluation process. A common error is to wait until findings are generated to think about use. But if intended users don’t know what they’re going to do with findings before they get them, they won’t know what to do with them when they get them. That may sound counterintuitive, but nothing magical happens in getting findings to ensure use. Indeed, whether findings will be useful depends on what questions get asked at the beginning and whose questions get answered. So attention to use undergirds U-FE from the moment the evaluation is conceived.

Attention to use also continues after findings have been generated. The utilization-focused evaluator works with intended users to apply findings and facilitate appropriate and informed use. The evaluation doesn’t end with findings or a report. Follow through to support use is a critical feature of U-FE. Answering evaluation questions with findings is one thing. Using those answers is quite another matter. Getting answers to evaluation questions doesn’t matter unless the findings are used.  Barriers to use abound. This book is about overcoming those barriers. 

Where is U-FE done?

Utilization-focused evaluations have been implemented around the world, from grassroots evaluations in Burkina Faso, West Africa to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Context matters. U-FE is highly sensitive to and must be adapted to context. That said, U-FE can be applied in any context where use is a priority. Where those involved in delivering, making decisions about, and funding programs want to learn, improve, and increase effectiveness, U-FE offers an energizing and results-oriented path forward. In a major review and synthesis of evaluation models and hypotheses on the nature of use, Contandriopoulos and Brousselle (2012, p. 70) described U-FE as “the utilization paradise,” the place where use flourishes.

---

More Sage Research Methods Community posts about evaluation