Evaluation use is a complex, iterative process involving diverse stakeholders and activities. Factors influencing evaluation use has long been discussed, however, little is known about current conceptualizations evaluation use including what counts as use, what encourages use, and how to measure use. Following two previous scoping reviews, we…

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…

This paper gathers descriptions on the use of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and essential skills cross Canada. IALS was developed as a population measure to lay out the distribution of skills and their relationship to other social and economic attributes. The information was taken from federal, provincial, and territorial…

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…

This practical guide to outcomes-based assessment in student affairs is designed to help readers meet the growing demand for accountability and for demonstrating student learning. The authors offer a framework for implementing the assessment of student learning and development and pragmatic advice on the strategies most appropriate for the…

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)