Date: Sunday, August 16, 2026
We are Michael Quinn Patton and Charmagne E. Campbell-Patton, from Utilization-Focused Evaluation, here to welcome you to Use & Influence of Evaluation week here at AEA365. We are a father-daughter team with more than 65 years of experience in evaluation consulting across a range of contexts.
There is no shortage of writing on evaluation use, dating back to even before the first edition of Utilization-focused evaluation (U-FE) that I (Michael) wrote back in 1978. But as with anything, much has changed over the past nearly fifty years, and this week is a chance to learn about what is new and top of mind right now. As we dive into this week, however, we wanted to ground our community in how we got here.
The first edition of U-FE was motivated by research that found a lack of intentionality around evaluation use and focused attention on the importance of intended users and uses of evaluation information. A few years later, the standards published by the Joint Committee on Evaluation Standards in 1981 dramatically spotlighted the importance of use. Informing action and supporting evidence-based decision-making is how evaluation contributes to a better world.
Subsequent versions of the book have come out, about every ten years and have added concepts like process use, the personal factor, and principles of UFE. Evaluation Use was one of three major branches on the much debated “evaluation theory tree,” first created by Marv Alkin and Tina Christie in 2004 and updated in 2024. Subsequent attempts to capture the diversity of perspectives in the field have resulted in metro maps (Lemire), gardens (Montrose-Moorhead) and a periodic table (Vaca). Regardless of the metaphor used, evaluation use continues to show up as an important and defining factor in evaluation.
In 2000, Valerie Caracelli and Hallie Preskill edited an edition of New Directions for Evaluation on the Expanding Scope of Evaluation Use. In that edition, Karen Kirkhart offered the first integrated theory of evaluation influence, which looked at source, intention and time as three key factors of evaluation influence. A few years later, Mel Mark and Gary Henry built upon what Kirkhart had offered, with a framework “to capture key mechanisms through which evaluation may have its effects.”
Over the past twenty-five years, evaluation use and influence have continued to be important in both the theory and practice of evaluation. Utility standards remain an important part of judging the quality of an evaluation. But as the world becomes more dynamic and complex, we are seeing an increase in the need to consider use through the lens of ongoing innovation and adaptation. Gone are the days of waiting five years for a summative evaluation and expecting that to be useful to make decisions or influence policy, when little is the same as it was five years ago. Developmental evaluation has taken off as a way to ensure ongoing use and influence for real-time decision-making and adaptive resilience.
This fall, we will release the 2nd edition of Developmental Evaluation, which offers the ADAPT framework as a way to promote ongoing use and influence of evaluation that is Agile, Dynamic, Actionable, Principled, and Timely.
Over the course of this week, at this fall’s American Evaluation Association conference, and beyond, we look forward to continuing the conversation about how to ensure that evaluation remains useful and influential in these challenging times.
For more on the history of evaluation use and influence to ground you in this week’s topic, we invite you to listen to conversations with both Michael and Karen available here.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please do so using the form on our website. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.