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Michael Quinn Patton's Facilitating Evaluation: Principles in Practice is the first book of its kind to explain in depth and detail how to facilitate evaluation processes with stakeholders, using the author's own stories of his experiences as an evaluation facilitator.

This book shows why those hoping to use evaluation to drive change in complex systems, rather than develop or improve one program, policy, or product, need to shift from the oversimplified idea of formative evaluation to a more specified continuous improvement model grounded in improvement science. In doing so, author Kristen L. Rohanna provides guidance to both evaluators and others, such as K-12 educators or hospital administrators, who lead improvement initiatives in their organizations and seek to solve persistent problems of practice.

This text provides a road map for evaluators doing business within or for government, public managers who are expected to assess and use evidence generated by a large variety of evaluation approaches, and students taking evaluation courses in public management.

The evaluation planning process consists of a multitude of decisions. For outcome evaluations, these decisions typically include the identification of the major questions to be addressed, the specification of high-priority outcomes, the translation of those outcomes into measurement strategies and instruments, the determination of counterfactual comparisons, the identification of timelines, and the planning of strategies for examining and analyzing data, among others. These decisions will ultimately influence the accuracy of evaluation inferences and conclusions. Validity refers to the strength of those evaluative judgments and the level of confidence that can be placed in them. This book will help readers to understand these validity concepts and apply them in the decision-making processes of evaluation planning. Careful attention to these principles will result in stronger evaluations and a stronger evidence base that can be utilized in making program-related decisions.