Hi my name is Sarah and I am a graduate student in the Adult Education/Human Resource Development program at James Madison University. I am currently in a Program Evaluation course and have a few questions on the current trends of evaluation related to Kirkpatrick's four-level evaluation process.

From my understanding, many organizations and individuals use Kirkpatrick's four-level evaluation process as the main evlauation tool. Phillips and Phillips (2005) suggest that Kirkpatrick's four-level model is outdated because it does not take into consideration return-on-investment; therefore, many new models have added ROI as a fifth level to Kirkpatrick's original four levels.

From your experience in the field and your organization, have you found that Kirkpatrick's four levels must be followed sequentially? In other words, does there have to be learning in order for behavior to occur?

Also, is Kirkpatrick's model the most frequently evaluation model that your organization uses?

Are there any other factorrs that your organization evaluates in addition to reaction, learning, behavior, results, and return-on-investment?

I appreciate your feedback and input and look forward to gaining further understanding and knowledge of evaluation procedures in current organizations.

Thank you,
Sarah

I would suggest that Krikpatrick has almost become a 'norm' for training evaluation and while a lot of organisations will follow procedures that sit within the four or even five levels, I doubt they refer to kirkpatrick specifically to do this.

quote:

In other words, does there have to be learning in order for behavior to occur?

What else would cause the behavior change? If you can figure out a way to change behavior without any learning occurring first you will become very rich and famous.

Grad student,

Under what conditions is the Kirkpatrick model appropriate and then how do we evaluate its effectives on the individual and organizational level?

Talk to the $ folks immediately.


Nero

quote:

From your experience in the field and your organization, have you found that Kirkpatrick's four levels must be followed sequentially?

quote:

Under what conditions is the Kirkpatrick model appropriate and then how do we evaluate its effectives on the individual and organizational level?

Super questions.

No, the levels do not need to be followed sequentally -- it is not practical or necessary to do so. It is better to measure what is imporant to the business, which usually is:

1) Was there an improvement in performance?
2) Was there an improvement in certain metrics important to my company?

Jay Cross has an excellent "contrarian" blog post on this topic.