An Exploratory Study of Process Use: Findings and Implications for Future Research

Abstract

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the notion of process use, that is, in understanding the ways in which individuals learn about the evaluand, evaluation practice, and each other, from their involvement in an evaluation study. As a form of social constructivism, process use is most closely related to participatory and collaborative evaluation approaches. The purpose of this article is to report the results of an exploratory study of process use and to discuss a set of variables that may influence process use. In addition, we pose several future research questions.