While I agree with my colleagues Harold and Charles on principle, particularly the need to move beyond the event, I think we do Kirkpatrick (collectively :) a disservice if we don't recognize that his level 4 was (or could be) "performance in terms of organizational and business metrics". And we do need metrics for our initiatives, to decide whether to keep, tweak, or kill.

IF it's a training intervention, but increasingly our needs are beyond what can be taught, and our teaching should be stretch over time anyway. So, it's not event-based, and consequently the intermediate steps may not make sense, and consequently the Kirkpatrick model loses value. If we introduce a job aid, what's level 2 or 3? SImilarly, if we put in a social network system.

But we should have expectations of what outcomes we want (yes, org/biz ones), and then we should be seeing if we're achieving them. And, Judith, I wouldn't trust to faith that our analysis is perfect and that 'cost-effective' is the most important criteria.