Undertaking evaluation and ensuring its quality is only worthwhile if the activity leads to some use of the evaluation findings and contributes to improved knowledge amongst those best able to take advantage from it.
There are at least three different ways in which evaluation is used.
- Evaluations may be used directly or in an instrumental manner when the results, findings, conclusions and recommendations are taken up. In practice this is unusual and where it does occur it tends to take place only partially.
- More often, several evaluations or evaluations combined with other evidence and opinion are used cumulatively to inform debates and influence decision-making. Evaluation thus stimulates the process of debate, challenge and counter challenge to evidence and its interpretation.
- Even where evaluation results are not used, the process of evaluation initiation and reflection can be useful by offering opportunities to exchange information, clarify thinking and develop frameworks.
The extent of use of evaluation and its impact is influenced by a number of factors:
- The organisational arrangements for dissemination: The time and resources available for dissemination and the degree to which the process is championed by those responsible for the work influences the understanding, communication and use of the findings.
- The quality of the evaluation: Where evaluation standards are high the results cannot be easily dismissed.
- The involvement of stakeholders in the stages of the evaluation cycle alongside evaluators and administrators: This is essential to build up evaluation use.
- The involvement of senior managers and directors. This helps ensure that policy and resource allocation as well as practice are influenced by evaluation findings.
- The application of a system of systematic follow up of the conclusions of evaluations: This process both draws attention to where the findings have been and have not been used and reduces the tendency to relearn the same lesson. The application of the process is uncommon.
- The institutional arrangements for conducting evaluation: There are no perfect models. Evaluation findings are likely to be of use to decision makers, those involved in the planning and design of interventions and those involved operationally. The tendency towards the organizational separation of evaluation from operational and policy functions may lead to improved independence and quality of evaluation. Policy and operational concerns can for example over emphasize what can be achieved through evaluation. On the other hand the separation may be less helpful if it leads to an overemphasis on evaluation management and limits the use of the evaluation. (Institutional arrangements are discussed further in the section of the GUIDE on developing evaluation capacity).
It is reasonable to conclude that the creation of an evaluation culture is essential for organisational learning. Key components of an evaluation culture over and above the generation of quality evaluations include: a presumption that interventions should be designed and implemented in a manner that facilitates subsequent evaluation; an appreciation of the range of purposes of evaluation; a recognition of the limits of evaluation; the scope for interpretation and the need to combine quantitative and qualitative evidence; and a recognition of the needs of different users of evaluation.