Abstract

Evaluation is a form of action research and is committed to creating change in the evaluated process by offering applicable recommendations. Evaluation shares a fundamental question with many intervention actions: “Do they really bring about change?” Evaluation utilization, or EU, is essential in order to create those changes. However, numerous studies have shown that non-utilization and under-utilization are more common then effective utilization of evaluation. We will examine some of the leading EU concepts in today’s professional literature. We will also outline some of the major factors influencing EU and will present a case study of long term EU perspective in an educational organization - Karev educational program, that has an internal evaluation unit which has been active for almost 15 years, and has been struggling with EU for as long as that. During the study we used, among other things, a concept mapping process.