User-centered evaluation

Much has been written on graduate medical education and its evaluation. Seldom, however, are mentioned the uses made or the benefits of such evaluations. Drawing on current models for increasing the use of information from external evaluations, the authors offer a user-centered approach for increasing the use of results from internal evaluations, the more typical form of evaluation in graduate medical education. The over-riding emphasis of the user-centered approach to evaluation is the utility of the resultant data. Three features characterize user-centered evaluation: an ordered set of steps with usefulness as the primary concern at each step; delineation of evaluator and decision-maker roles; and attention to the general communication aspects of evaluation. This article describes these three characteristics, concluding with two fundamental points: (1) A user-centered approach to evaluation will help evaluation do what it is supposed to do: provide information that gets used to increase the effectiveness of everyday decisions. (2) A user-centered evaluation accomplishes this, first, by having a pervasive attitude of utility and, second, by carefully attending to the three characteristic features of this approach to evaluation.