Utilization Focused Evaluation for Evidence Use Training Course

Course overview

Development and humanitarian evaluations often produce technically sound reports that are read late, discussed briefly, and rarely used to change programme choices. This course addresses the practical gap between collecting credible evidence and ensuring that intended users act on it. Participants learn how to identify the decisions that matter, work with primary intended users from the outset, and design evaluations around real accountability, learning, adaptation, scale-up, targeting, and resource-allocation questions.

The course applies Michael Quinn Patton’s Utilization-Focused Evaluation (UFE) framework to programme and project settings. Participants practise assessing readiness for evaluation, mapping stakeholders and power dynamics, identifying and engaging primary intended users, framing priority evaluation questions, selecting fit-for-purpose methods, and planning evidence interpretation and use. They also learn to connect UFE with OECD DAC Evaluation Criteria, build a use-focused evaluation matrix, facilitate sense-making sessions, and document management responses and follow-up actions.

Instruction combines expert-led method demonstrations, humanitarian and development case material, small-group design workshops, and structured critique of evaluation plans. Each participant develops a utilization-focused evaluation design for a live or realistic programme, including a stakeholder engagement plan, decision-use map, priority questions, methods outline, communications approach, and evidence-use action plan. This provides both the attendee and their manager with a practical template that can be adapted directly for an upcoming evaluation or learning review.

The course is suited to professionals who commission, manage, conduct, or use evaluations across NGOs, UN agencies, donor-funded programmes, government delivery units, and social-impact organisations. It serves foundation-level practitioners who need a clear UFE process and intermediate practitioners seeking to improve weak uptake from existing evaluation systems.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Diagnose evaluation readiness using a utilization-focused readiness assessment
• Map stakeholders, decision authority, and primary intended users in an evaluation context
• Formulate priority evaluation questions linked to named programme decisions
• Construct a decision-use map that connects evidence, users, timing, and action
• Develop a use-focused evaluation matrix aligned with OECD DAC Evaluation Criteria
• Select mixed-method data collection approaches proportionate to intended use
• Facilitate an evidence sense-making session using structured interpretation prompts
• Produce a utilization-focused evaluation design and post-evaluation use plan

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Managers — who need evaluations to inform programme adaptation and organisational learning
• Programme Managers — who commission evaluations and must convert findings into delivery decisions
• Evaluation Officers and Consultants — who design studies and want stronger stakeholder ownership of findings
• Humanitarian Response Coordinators — who need timely evidence for operational prioritisation and course correction
• Donor Programme Officers — who require credible evidence and documented management responses from grantees
• Government M&E Specialists — who support public programmes where evaluation findings must influence policy and implementation

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand the basic purpose of monitoring and evaluation and be familiar with concepts such as indicators, data collection, evaluation questions, and programme theories of change or logframes. Experience contributing to a project review, evaluation, learning workshop, or results-reporting process is helpful but not essential. Participants should be comfortable reading simple tables and working in Microsoft Excel; no statistical software, coding, advanced research methods, or prior knowledge of Utilization-Focused Evaluation is required. Complete beginners can attend, but should expect to spend time practising core M&E terminology alongside the UFE process.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each UFE step through short demonstrations, annotated examples, and discussion of development and humanitarian evaluation cases. Participants work in small groups to analyse user demand, decision contexts, ethical tensions, and evidence constraints. Hands-on workshops use a programme scenario or participants’ own work to build stakeholder maps, evaluation questions, matrices, and use plans. Peer review sessions test whether proposed findings could realistically influence a named decision. The final application clinic converts each participant’s draft into a practical plan for use with their team, commissioner, or client.

Course outline

Day 1: Foundations of utilization-focused evaluation

• Principles and intended outcomes of Utilization-Focused Evaluation
• Evaluation use versus evaluation influence
• Instrumental, conceptual, process, and symbolic use
• The 12-step UFE process
• Evaluation readiness and organisational context
• Evaluator roles, facilitation, and independence
• Ethics, power, and participation in humanitarian evaluation

Workshop: Participants assess a case organisation’s readiness for a proposed evaluation and produce a readiness diagnosis with recommended next steps.

Day 2: Engaging intended users and decisions

• Identifying primary intended users
• Stakeholder mapping and decision-authority analysis
• User engagement strategies and governance arrangements
• Decision calendars and evidence timing
• Decision-use maps for programme adaptation
• Managing conflicting stakeholder expectations
• Participation, inclusion, and affected-population perspectives

Workshop: Participants create a stakeholder map and decision-use map for a programme evaluation, identifying named users, decisions, and engagement actions.

Day 3: Designing useful evaluation questions and methods

• From programme theory to decision-relevant questions
• Prioritising evaluation questions with users
• Applying OECD DAC Evaluation Criteria proportionately
• Use-focused evaluation matrices
• Mixed-method design for credible and timely evidence
• Sampling choices under operational constraints
• Data quality, safeguarding, and informed consent

Workshop: Participants build a use-focused evaluation matrix that links priority questions, indicators, methods, users, decisions, and reporting deadlines.

Day 4: Planning interpretation, communication, and action

• Data analysis plans built around intended use
• Participatory interpretation and sense-making sessions
• Triangulation and credible claims
• Findings formats for operational and strategic audiences
• Evidence products beyond the evaluation report
• Facilitating management response workshops
• Tracking recommendations, actions, and ownership

Workshop: Participants facilitate a simulated findings sense-making session and produce an action-oriented management response tracker.

Day 5: Applying UFE to live evaluation work

• Reviewing a utilization-focused evaluation design
• Budgeting and scheduling for user engagement
• Writing use-focused terms of reference
• Procurement criteria for evaluation providers
• Risk management for politically sensitive findings
• Embedding use in MEAL and adaptive management cycles
• Personal application planning and peer feedback

Workshop: Participants present a complete utilization-focused evaluation design and leave with a 90-day implementation plan for applying it in their organisation.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, KoboToolbox, Microsoft Power BI, OECD DAC Evaluation Criteria

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions