Michael Quinn Patton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Quinn Patton is an independent organizational development and program evaluation consultant, and former President of the American Evaluation Association.
After receiving his doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he spent 18 years on the faculty of the University of Minnesota (1973-1991), including five years as Director of the Minnesota Center for Social Research and ten years with the Minnesota Extension Service.
Patton has written five books on the art and science of program evaluation, including Utilization-Focused Evaluation (3rd ed., 1997), in which he emphasizes the importance of designing evaluations to insure their usefulness, rather than simply creating long reports that may never get read or never result in any practical changes. He has written about evaluation, and worked in the field beginning in the 1970s when evaluation in the non-profit sector was a relatively new development.
His most recent book, Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed, a collaboration with Frances Westley and Brenda Zimmerman, was published in 2006.
[edit] Bibliography
- Practical Evaluation. Sage, 1982. ISBN 0803919050
- Culture and Evaluation. 1985. ISBN 0875897630
- Creative Evaluation. Sage, 1987. ISBN 0803930569
- How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation. Sage, 1987.
- Family Sexual Abuse: Frontline Research and Evaluation." Sage, 1991.
- Utilization-Focused Evaluation: The New Century Text (3rd edition) Sage, 1997 ISBN 0803952651
- Grand Canyon Celebration: A Father-Son Journey of Discovery. 1999 Prometheus, 1999.
- Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (3rd edition). Sage, 2002. ISBN 0761919716
- Teaching Evaluation Using the Case Method: New Directions for Evaluation. 2005. (with Patricia Patrizi)
- Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2006.
[edit] Awards
Patton is one of only two recipients of both the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award (awarded by the Evaluation Research Society and subsequently by the American Evaluation Association) for "outstanding contributions to evaluation use and practice" and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for lifetime contributions to evaluation theory (awarded by the American Evaluation Association). The Society for Applied Sociology honored him with the 2001 Lester F. Ward Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Sociology. He was President of the American Evaluation Association in 1988 and Co-Chair of the 2005 International Evaluation Conference in Toronto sponsored jointly by the American and Canadian evaluation associations.
