If program decisions hinged only on information: A response to patton

This is the third part of a miniseries on the use of evaluation. For those of you who missed the earlier episodes, I'll start with a brief recap You can also enjoy the drama and beauty of this episode without worrying about what went before. I gave a speech at the American Evaluation Association in October 1987, which also appeared in the February 1988 issue of Evaluation Practice. The paper discussed obstacles to the use of evaluation results, channels by which the obstacles are circumvented and results come into currency, and the functions that evaluations serve. I intended to illustrate the many and varied ways in which evaluation results influence programming even when program decision makers do not implement results immediately and directly Compared to much that has beenand is being-written about the sorry fate of evaluations, I intended it to be a beacon of hope. Although I thought it was an upbeat talk, Michael Q. Patton, who spoke at AEA the following day and whose speech was published in the May 1988 issue of this journal, took exception to it. He especially disagreed with two points I had made First, he disagreed with my statement that evaluators have had indifferent success in making evaluation the basis of decisions . He said that success was much greater than I had indicated. Second, he believed that my vision for the future was dismal. He quoted my statement: