Understanding how evaluation audiences perceive credibility can help evaluators design evaluations and reports that support appropriate use. While researchers have studied credibility assessment among various educational stakeholders, little research has been conducted with the broader public. This study explored potential factors affecting the public's perceptions of the credibility of evaluation findings. It involved a content analysis of lay publications of educational evaluations, the development of survey scales, three experiments with crowdsourced samples of adults in the United States (i.e. the public), and the replication of one of these three experiments with educational administrators. In the experiments, participants were randomly assigned to different versions of a hypothetical press release, to assess how varying characteristics of an evaluation and its findings would affect perceptions of the evaluation's credibility. In the first experiment, the type of measure (student tests, student surveys) presented in the hypothetical evaluation did not affect the perceived credibility of the findings. However, in the second experiment, when each evaluation presented findings from both types of measures simultaneously, the test findings were seen as more credible than the survey findings. The difference in the credibility between the two measures' findings was larger when the measures provided conflicting information regarding the program's effectiveness. In the third experiment, participants were presented with findings from two evaluations, one conducted by an evaluator and one conducted by school stakeholders, and participants perceived findings from the evaluator to be more credible. The difference between the credibility of the two evaluations was greater when their findings conflicted with one another, and was reduced when the school stakeholders were described to be highly credible. For all three experiments, the effect of the content of the findings on the credibility of findings differed according to participants' prior attitudes towards the program evaluated. The results of this study demonstrated that the public's perceptions of credibility can be influenced by characteristics of evaluations, evaluation findings, and individual audience characteristics, as well as interactions between each of these factors. These results can inform evaluators' decisions when they design and report evaluations. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]