PERGAMON Studies in Educational Evaluation 29 (2003) 13-21 Studies in Educational Evaluation www.elsevier.com/stueduc TRANSFORMING A UTILIZATION FOCUSED EVALUATION (UFE) GONE AWRY: A CASE OF INTENDED USE BY UNINTENDED USERS Todd Michael Franke,* Christina A. Christie, ** and Michelle T. Parra* *University of California, Los Angeles,USA **Claremont GraduateSchool,Claremont,California, USA Introduction This article describes a utilization-focused evaluation gone awry. By “utilization focused” we are referring to the use of Utilization Focused Evaluation (UFE) (Patton, 1997) theory to guide our evaluation work. By “gone awry” we mean that two of our primary intended users, the individuals identified as those most likely to use the evaluation information for decision making, left the state Bureau immediately prior to the dissemination of our first year findings. Suddenly, our evaluation lost much of its potential for utilization, or so it would seem. This article presents a case study of a solution to an unanticipated predicament in a utilization-focused evaluation. Patton (1997) refers to the turnover of primary intended users as the “Achilles heel” of a UFE. This article focuses particularly on what happened in an evaluation we conducted when the two primary intended users left the program and were replaced. The discussion centers on the potential choices for use when the intended users of an evaluation are no longer part of the evaluation. We suspect that the issue of changes in the original group of intended users in a UFE evaluation may be more common than acknowledged in the literature and thus warrants tirther attention. Utilization Focused Evaluation (UFE): The Theory Guiding Our Work What is utilization? In the social sciences and education we conduct evaluations to assess the merits of programs designed to improve the welfare of people, organizations and society. One of the primary objectives of evaluation is to provide meaningful information 0191-491X/03/$ - see front matter 0 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd PII: SO191-491X(03)00003-8