How to Utilize the Results of Your Evaluation

Utilization: Communicating Findings and Utilizing Results

When the evaluation has been performed, and all data has been collected, the final step for the evaluator is to communicate findings. Once findings are shared, the ultimate goal may be reached - the results of the evaluation can be utilized.

Communicating Findings and Insights

The evaluator should discuss upfront with stakeholders the most useful way to communicate findings. A wide range of options is available, for example: weekly discussions with evaluators, monthly discussions or roundtables with a larger audience, a comprehensive report of findings at the end of the evaluation.

Stakeholders will most likely have preferences regarding how, and how often, they want to be informed of findings and insights and a communication plan should be negotiated with them. In addition to stakeholders directly affected by evaluation findings, it can be very useful to communicate evaluation findings with outside audiences. Such sharing of information can serve many purposes. It may "improve the functioning of related projects and organizations; provide an accounting to funding and regulatory bodies; convince diverse audiences of the project's importance; and generate further support for the projects you have implemented."¹ Information can be shared with outside audiences in a variety of ways - everything from an informal conversation to a press conference.

Utilizing the Process and Results of Evaluation

The evaluator should, at the outset, have identified for whom the evaluation is being done, and to what use those primary intended users planned to put the evaluation results. He or she should have asked, and formed the evaluation plan in line with the answers to, the following questions: What do you want to know more about? What decisions do you need more information in order to make? What will you do with the answers to your questions?² The evaluation should, furthermore, have been explicitly developed in order to address the major goal of the primary intended users, whether to improve the program; to evaluate the effectiveness of the program; or to generate new knowledge.

If the evaluation was effectively designed to provide individuals who were identified as being willing and able to use evaluation results with information those users needed and wanted, the utilization process should be successful. It is worth noting though, that while utilization of the results of the evaluation is certainly the primary goal of an evaluation, important benefits may also derive from the evaluation process. The process of undergoing an evaluation can, for example, build shared meaning and understanding, support and enhance the program (by building evaluation-based data collection and analysis into the program design); and/ or support human and organizational development by training staff in new skills.³ In sum, a well thought-out evaluation will provide benefits no matter what the results are. By the simple virtue of being well thought- out, the evaluation will provide program staff an opportunity to learn, and to teach.

Footnotes:
1. W. K. Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook (1998) at 97.
2. Id. at 99.
3. Id. at 102.