Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation, by James D. and Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick

ATD Press, October 2016
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I picked this up looking for a framework or method to evaluate training delivered to customers and end users, since that’s my recent background. If you’re running a certification program with engaged stakeholders from your customer and access to the trainees after the fact, this might fit the bill. If you’re doing something less intensive, there are a few chapters with some useful info that you could likely put into practice, but half of the model won’t be practical for you.

Where this model is meant to be used is internal training programs, particularly those that are meant to change foundational employee behaviors. I think this is best suited to supervisory or leadership training, workshops on relationship building for customer-facing teams, that kind of thing. (Durable or semi-durable skills, if you’re familiar with that concept.) But again, for less intensive training you may still find some useful aspects.

The four evaluation levels of the model are Reaction, Learning, Behavior, and Results. Briefly, you can think of them as satisfaction with the training itself, the extent to which attendees acquire the knowledge delivered, whether or not they actually apply that knowledge, and whether the training has moved the needle on specific outcomes. They are progressively harder to measure, but their impact and usefulness to the business also increases.

Reaction is easy to measure in the moment, and you can capture some aspects of Learning as well. But to get at Behavior and Results, you need to have planned the entire training with them in mind. The authors recommend that you start planning by gathering your stakeholders and identifying the specific results you need — the targeted outcomes, and leading indicators that can act as measures. There’s a lot of good info to assist with this part.

This sets you up to ensure that what you’re teaching and how you’re doing it are actually going to meet the need. It also opens a conversation that will unearth barriers for trainees when they try to apply what they learned. For example, maybe your organization wants customer-facing staff to build better relationships with customers. You’ll want to look at the KPIs those teams are supposed to meet, and adjust them to reflect the fact that they’ll be spending more time with each customer if they put these new behaviors into practice. If leaders are unable or unwilling to do that, then the potential impact of the training will be diminished. 

Overall I found the first half of this pretty engaging, as there were parts of it that were applicable to the type of training I had in mind. I also thought Chapters 10 and 11 would be a great reference, as they discuss how to approach creating measurement instruments and provide tons of examples. You’d be able to put together a decent tool pretty quickly with that information.

The second half was of less interest to me. Part 3 covers data analysis and reporting, and part 4 (which I skipped) is a series of case studies. There are also two or three chapters sprinkled throughout that were written by guest authors, and I found those to be less useful.

If you’re part of an internal training or learning and development team and you’re not already familiar with this model, this is worth a read. If you’re training customers but don’t typically have a strong commitment from stakeholders to support the training, this may still be helpful. In that case I’d recommend that you pick and choose chapters and skim or skip what doesn’t feel relevant for your situation.