Evaluation: What's the Use?
| Author | Jade Maloney |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X1701700404 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Academic Article |
Jade Maloney—Evaluation: what’s the use? 25
ACADEMIC ARTICLE Evaluation Journal of Australasia Vol 17 | No 4 | 2017 | pp. 25–38
JADE MALONEY
Evaluation: what’s the use?
Concerns about non-use of evaluations have plagued
the profession since it emerged in the 1960s to guide
government decision-making about social policies
and programs. While there is a substantial body of
empirical and theoretical literature about evaluation
use, this literature does not identify the factors that are
considered most important to facilitating evaluation
use or the pathways to evaluation use. Additionally,
much of the literature is from North America and
Europe and there has been no large-scale study
of evaluation use in Australia. This study aimed to
identify Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) members’
perceptions of the levels of use of evaluation and the
factors associated with use, as well as how evaluators
overcome barriers to use. It used a questionnaire of AES
members and in-depth interviews with evaluators. The
AES members who responded perceive both demand-
side factors, particularly leadership commitment and
individual receptiveness to evaluation, and supply-
side factors, particularly involvement of stakeholders
in identifying the evaluation purpose and eective
communication of ndings, as important to evaluation
use. Evaluators employ a range of utilisation-focused
strategies and have some success in negotiating the
barriers they encounter to use. Evaluators’ experience
reects that the factors that are most important to use
and the pathways to use dier by context, suggesting
that existing theoretical models of evaluation use
could be strengthened through recognition of
context-based pathways.
Introduction
Evaluation emerged as a professional discipline to guide government
decision-making about social policies and programs in western
democracies in the 1960s (Patton, 2008). Its centrality in public
Jade Maloney is one of the Directors at
ARTD Consultants, Sydney.
Email: jade.maloney@artd.com.au
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