Compare methods

	Utilization-Focused Evaluation	Participatory Evaluation
Field	Public Policy	Public Policy
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1978	1998
Originator	Michael Quinn Patton	J. Bradley Cousins & Elizabeth Whitmore
Type	Use-driven program evaluation framework	Collaborative, stakeholder-engaged evaluation approach
Seminal source	Patton, M. Q. (2008). Utilization-Focused Evaluation (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. ISBN: 9781412958615	Cousins, J. B., & Whitmore, E. (1998). Framing participatory evaluation. New Directions for Evaluation, 1998(80), 5–23.
Aliases	U-FE, Patton Utilization-Focused Evaluation, Use-Focused Evaluation	Collaborative Evaluation, Stakeholder-Based Evaluation, Practical Participatory Evaluation
Related	4	4
Summary	Utilization-focused evaluation (U-FE) is a framework, developed by Michael Quinn Patton from the late 1970s, built on a single organising principle: an evaluation should be judged by its actual use by the people for whom it is intended. Rather than treating use as an afterthought to a technically sound study, U-FE makes intended use by primary intended users the criterion that drives every decision — what is evaluated, what questions are asked, which methods are used, and how findings are reported. The evaluator's job is to facilitate that use throughout, not merely to deliver a report.	Participatory evaluation is a family of approaches in which stakeholders — program staff, beneficiaries, community members — are engaged as active partners in conducting the evaluation rather than as passive subjects of it. In their influential 1998 framing, J. Bradley Cousins and Elizabeth Whitmore distinguished two streams: practical participatory evaluation, oriented to improving program decisions and use, and transformative participatory evaluation, oriented to empowerment and social justice. What unites them is shared control of the inquiry, but they vary along dimensions of who participates, how much control they hold, and how deeply they are involved.