Essentials of Utilization-Focused Evaluation

Based on Michael Quinn Patton′s best-selling Utilization-Focused Evaluation, this briefer book provides an overall framework and essential checklist steps for designing and conducting evaluations that actually get used. The new material and innovative graphics present the utilization-focused evaluation process as a complex adaptive system, incorporating current understandings about systems thinking and complexity concepts. The book integrates theory and practice, is based on both research and professional experience, and offers new case examples and cartoons with Patton′s signature humor.

Michael Quinn Patton is author of more than a dozen books on evaluation including Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods, 4th ed (2015), Blue Marble Evaluation (2020), Principles-Focused Evaluation (2018), Facilitating Evaluation (2018) and Developmental Evaluation (2011). Based in Minnesota, he was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota for 18 years and is a former president of the American Evaluation Association (AEA). Michael is a recipient of the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award, the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award, and the Research on Evaluation Award, all from AEA He has also received the Lester F. Ward Distinguished Contribution to Applied and Clinical Sociology Award from the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology. In 2021 he received the first Transformative Evaluator Award from EvalYouth. He is an active speaker, trainer, and workshop presenter who has conducted applied research and evaluation on a broad range of issues and has worked with organizations and programs at the international, national, state, provincial, and local levels. Michael has three children―a musician, an engineer, and an evaluator―and four grandchildren. When not evaluating, he enjoys exploring the woods and rivers of Minnesota, where he lives.