The challenges of making evaluation useful

The evaluation profession has been studying ways of increasing the use of evaluations. Here are some of the things we’ve learned are important for evaluations to be useful: being clear about intended uses by primary intended users; creating and nurturing a results-oriented, realitytesting culture that supports evaluation use; collaboration in deciding what outcomes to commit to and hold yourselves accountable for; making measurement of outcomes and program processes thoughtful, meaningful, timely, and credible – and integrated into the program; using the results in a visible and transparent way, and modeling for others serious use of results.