Enriching Program Evaluation Utilization in Selected Chartered Christian Kenyan Universities through Human Resource Management and Development

Abstract

Higher education in Africa has marked a rise not only in the number of institutions, academic programs and students, but also in monitoring and evaluation of its processes and products. However, there is still scanty evidence of whether or how the evaluation results are used and what factors affect their use or non-use. The researcher adopted the quantitative correlation design to study associations between human factors and the use or non-use of PE results in selected Chartered Christian Universities (CCUs) in Kenya. A population census of program leaders of 50 accredited, operational and re-evaluated academic programs in three CCUs was conducted. A questionnaire was used for data collection. Descriptive and inferential analysis was done. Pearson Chi-square and Cramer’s V tests were used to determine the association between faculty and staff evaluation skills, involvement in program evaluation process, and commitment to use the evaluation results (independent variables) and use or non-use of program evaluation results (dependent variable). The findings revealed that evaluators’ and users’ evaluation skills, involvement and commitment to use the results had a moderate, positive and statistically significant correlation with the use or non-use of evaluation results to modify a component of the program. This was shown by ?² (1df) =6.549^a,  p -value =.010 and Cramer’s V of .400 (p=.010) for the level of faculty and staff evaluation skills; ?² (1df) =8.168^a, p -value = .004 and Cramer’s V of .446 (p=.004) for faculty and staff involvement in PE evaluation process; and by ?² (1df) =5.373^a  , p -value = .020 and Cramer’s V of .362 (p = .020) for faculty and staff commitment to use the evaluation results. The findings suggest that when the level of faculty and staff evaluation skills, involvement and commitment to use the results is high, the use of evaluation results is likely to increase. The researcher therefore recommends enactment of institutional policies and evaluation practices that will increase faculty and staff level of evaluation skills, participation in the evaluation process, and commitment to use evaluation results, since these human factors tend to enhance the use of evaluation results.

Keywords: Program evaluation, evaluation use, evaluation human factors, evaluation capacity, quality education, higher education, Christian universities.