Evaluators' Use of Peer Debriefing: Three Impressionist Tales

Abstract

Program evaluators are sometimes requested to help their clients identify ways to use evaluation findings, but little guidance for this task has been provided in the literature. How might evaluators grapple with this dilemma? This article discusses the use of peer debriefing as a method for helping evaluators during the final stage of the evaluation of a curriculum in a school of a large state university and presents the implications of these findings for program evaluators and qualitative researchers. The authors employ an impressionist tale format to discuss the impact of the peer debriefing process on the peer debriefer, the principal investigator, and the project director. The method is found to be helpful to evaluators who face issues of roles, the use of expertise, and interpersonal dynamics.

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