Practical Evaluation

Patton demonstrates that the main failing of most evaluations is a lack of practicality. They fail to be cheap, accurate, attuned to the differences between different programmes or to provide useful, realistic policy alternatives for decision-makers. Patton discusses the major stages of the evaulation process, describing evaluation design, measurement, analysis and reporting. Using his own field and workshop experiences, he provides a new vision of evaluation that emphasizes the elements of feasibility, efficiency, and utility.

"An unusual and very useful book. . . . Provides a first-rate practical primer in evaluation. . . . Sorts out . . . issues commonsensically and very persuasively, and proceeds to argue for a collaborative evaluation practice. . . . A toolkit of principles and techniques that evaluators who are prepared wholeheartedly to work practically can make their own."

Michael Quinn Patton lives in Minnesota where, according to the state's poet laureate, Garrison Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." It was this lack of interesting statistical variation in Minnesota that led him to qualitative inquiry despite the strong quantitative orientation of his doctoral studies in sociology at the University of Wisconsin. He serves on the graduate faculty of The Union Institute, a nontraditional, interdisciplinary, nonresidential and individually designed doctoral program. He was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota for 18 years, including five years as Director of the Minnesota Center for Social Research, where he was awarded the Morse-Amoco Award for innovative teaching. Readers of this book will not be surprised to learn that he has also won the University of Minnesota storytelling competition.

He has authored five other Sage books: Utilization-Focused Evaluation, Creative Evaluation, Practical Evaluation, How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation, and Family Sexual Abuse: Frontline Research and Evaluation. He edited Culture and Evaluation for the journal New Direction in Program Evaluation. His creative nonfiction book, Grand Canyon Celebration: A Father-Son Journey of Discovery, was a finalist for 1999 Minnesota Book of the Year.

He is former President of the American Evaluation Association and the only recipient of both the Alva and Gunner Myrdal Award for Outstanding Contributions to Useful and Practical Evaluation from the Evaluation ResearchSociety and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for Lifelong Contributions to Evaluation Theory from the American Evaluation Association. The Society for Applied Sociology awarded him the 2001 Lester F. Ward Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Sociology.