All Pulling Together: Working Toward a Successful Evaluation

Abstract

Utilization of results is an important aspect of program evaluation. Naturalistic methods aim at increasing the utilization of research findings by providing stakeholders with a rich understanding of the situation being studied. In this article, we report on a study that caused us to examine the assumption of the power of naturalistic methods. We found that one key to utilization is to narrow the gap between the type of information provided by the study and the expectations of the stakeholders.