Utilisation Focused Evaluation

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The main emphasis of the FMFI project is to conduct research in cooperation with a range of partners, to find innovative solutions to connectivity problems in deep rural settings, to document these and to disseminate the results so that other practitioners could benefit from the lessons learnt. The focus in the monitoring and evaluation activities in the project therefore is on utilisation. Michael Quinn Patton’s utilisation-focused evaluation (U-FE) framework has direct relevance in terms of intended use by intended users of the lessons learnt in the FMFI projects. Extracts of the framework are given here to be applied in the FMFI project.

Utilization-Focused Evaluation (U-FE) 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 of how everything that is done, from beginning to end, will affect use. Use concerns how real people in the real world apply evaluation findings and experience the evaluation process. Therefore, the focus in utilization-focused evaluation is on intended use by 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.

Utilization-focused evaluation does not advocate any particular evaluation content, model, method, theory, or even use. Rather, it is a process for helping primary intended users select the most appropriate content, model, methods, theory, and uses for their particular situation. Situational responsiveness guides the interactive process between evaluator and primary intended users. A utilization-focused evaluation can include any evaluative purpose (formative, summative, developmental), any kind of data (quantitative, qualitative, mixed), any kind of design (e.g., naturalistic, experimental), and any kind of focus (processes, outcomes, impacts, costs, and cost-benefit, among many possibilities). Utilization-focused evaluation is a process for making decisions about these issues in collaboration with an identified group of primary users focusing on their intended uses of evaluation.

The U-FE checklist is used as a framework for discussing the FMFI projects. The primary U-FE tasks and their associated facilitation challenges are considered, as well as the underlying premises. The 12 parts of the checklist are given, with brief comments on the initial status of each part, as well as indicating where more work needs to be done for the FMFI project to conform to a full U-FE framework.