Marvin Alkin and Jean King published three AJE articles on evaluation use over four years, a coherent and comprehensive series covering the historical development of evaluation use, definitions and factors associated with use and misuse, and theories of evaluation use and influence, concluding with assessment of the first 50 years of use research.…

Teacher evaluation has been used for decades in schools as a human resource management practice to hold teachers accountable and to help them develop professionally. This paper provides a synthesis of empirical studies about teacher evaluation. We use an overarching theoretical framework, the value chain, as a guide to collect and map insights…

The second article in this series on the history of evaluation use has three sections. The first and longest develops a functional definition of the term "use," noting that a thorough definition of evaluation use includes the initial stimulus (i.e., evaluation findings or process), the user, the way people use the information, the aspect…

A misconception exists that validity may refer only to the "interpretation" of test scores and not to the "uses" of those scores. The development and evolution of validity theory illustrate test score interpretation was a primary focus in the earliest days of modern testing, and that validating interpretations derived from test…

Advances in validity theory and alacrity in validation practice have suffered because the term "validity" has been used to refer to two incompatible concerns: (1) the degree of support for specified interpretations of test scores (i.e. intended score meaning) and (2) the degree of support for specified applications (i.e. intended test…

Although higher education institutions often engage in assessment practices, use of assessment results to improve student learning is rare (Blaich & Wise, 2011). We surmised that this rarity could be partially explained by unclear communication regarding what "use of results" means. The current study qualitatively investigated how…

A fundamental goal of student learning outcomes assessment in higher education is to use student learning evidence in decision making to improve educational programs. Such use of assessment findings, however, is atypical. This article argues that a narrow conception of use contributes to this conclusion and an accurate appraisal of the…

One of the simplest indicators of teaching or course effectiveness is student ratings on one or more global items from the entire rating scale. That approach seems intuitively sound and easy to use. Global items have even been recommended by a few researchers to get a quick-read, at-a-glance summary for summative decisions about faculty. The…

Coburn and Turner (this issue) present an intriguing framework for understanding how data has come to be used in the current high accountability environments in education. In this framework, they connect various processes of data use within organizational and political contexts. Data use is presented using an ecological perspective that deepens…

The chapter explores critical roles of internal evaluators in contemporary organizational settings. The need is highlighted for an expanded, reconfigured, unorthodox set of roles and styles of work to meet the needs of the emerging learning organizations effectively. A discussion of major categories of internal evaluator roles emerged from the…

Local assessment systems are being marketed as formative, benchmark, predictive, and a host of other terms. Many so-called formative assessments are not at all similar to the types of assessments and strategies studied by Black and Wiliam (1998) but instead are interim assessments. In this article, we clarify the definition and uses of interim…

Definitional issues on misuse of evaluation results are discussed, and examples from the research literature are presented. It is concluded that the concept of misutilization is insufficiently delineated and that a systematic exploration of the subject is warranted. (TJH)

Provides a conceptual framework for considering the distinction between evaluation use and evaluation influence and the relationship between evaluation use and knowledge use. Clarifies and expands some of the established definitions of concepts related to evaluation use. (SLD)

This introduction to a special section on evaluation utilization decribes the charge presented to the commissioned authors: to clarify what is meant by evaluation utilization. The resulting papers are described as presenting a clear rejection of the term utilization and as providing substantial assistance in distinguishing between utilization and…

Use and misuse of evaluation results are discussed. Variations in evaluation definitions, entity used, nature of the user, time and place of evaluation use, personal factor, basic premises of utilization-focused evaluation, misutilization, and method and rationales for use are discussed. A case example with a federal program is outlined. (TJH)