Needs assessment

A needs assessment is a systematic process for determining and addressing needs, or "gaps", between current conditions, and desired conditions, or "wants".

Needs assessments can help improve policy or program decisions, individuals, education, training, organizations, communities, or products.

There are three types of need in a needs assessment; perceived need, expressed need and relative need.

1. Perceived needs are defined by what people think about their needs; each standard changes with each respondent.
2. Expressed needs are defined by the number of people who have sought help and focuses on circumstances where feelings are translated into action. A major weakness of expressed needs assumes that all people with needs seek help.
3. Relative needs are concerned with equity and must consider differences in population and social pathology.

History

Considered the "father of needs assessment", Roger Kaufman developed a model for determining needs defined as a gap in results. Kaufman argued that an actual need can only be identified independent of a proposed solution. To conduct a quality needs assessment according to Kaufman, determine the current results, articulate the desired results, and the distance between results is the actual need. Once a need is identified, then a solution can be selected.

Extensive vs. intensive

Extensive research uses a large number of cases to determine the characteristics of a population while intensive research examines one or a few cases in depth. A variety of data collection and decision making tools and processes can be used for each.

One type of extensive needs assessment is SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The basic process involves gathering information about an organization's activities and outcomes within a period.

Once the group has identified needs, they then generally turn to intensive needs assessment in order to rank the identified needs so they can choose what they will address.

Intensive needs assessment requires the ranking of priorities. This part of the research is not so much concerned with developing a detailed plan for solving the needs situation, but rather for examining the depth of the need and potentially required resources.

Needs chain model

A needs chain model is a framework that allows organizations to simultaneously consider the individuals' needs within an organization and the organization's needs, in order to prioritise resources and identify areas of improvement for the organization.

A needs chain model is composed of aligned horizontal and vertical processes, in which there are four different kinds of needs that describe and identify the ultimate performance goal, solutions, and what might affect these solutions. These needs are:

• Performance need: A level of performance required for satisfactory functioning.
• Instrumental need: An intervention, product, or substance that is required to obtain satisfactory functioning.
• Conscious need: Needs that are known to those who have them.
• Unconscious need: Needs that is unknown to those who have them.

Also, it has four vertical factors that consider:

• Organizational need: Needs that pertain to behavior or tangible outcomes, such as market share or sales target.
• Individual needs: Needs that pertain to the individual's attitudes about the organization or themselves, such as job satisfaction.
• Causes
• Level of objectivity for all needs: The objectivity level requires all needs to have a certain level of objectivity and to be based on deep investigation or further analysis.

Training needs assessment

Training needs assessment is a systematic inquiry of training needs within an organization for the purposes of identifying priorities and making decisions, and allocating resources in a manner consistent with identified program goals and objectives. Though beginning with training as the desired solution, it has been argued, diminishes the value of the needs assessment, the popularity of the term "training needs assessment" has made it part of the training and adult learning lexicon.

There are three levels of training needs assessment:

Organizational assessment evaluates the level of organizational performance. An assessment of this type will determine the knowledge, skills, ability, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that are needed within the organization. It also identifies what is required to alleviate the problems and weaknesses of the agency as well as to enhance strengths and competencies. The organizational assessment takes into consideration factors such as changing demographics, political trends, technology, and the economy.

Occupational assessment examines the KSAOs required for affected occupational groups. The occupational assessment identifies how and which occupational discrepancies or gaps exist, as well as examining new ways to do work that could fix those discrepancies or gaps.

Individual assessment analyzes how well an individual employee is doing a job and determines the individual's capacity to do new or different work. An individual assessment provides information on which employees need training and what kind.

Community

A community needs assessment can be broadly categorized into three types based on their respective starting points: First, needs assessments which aim to discover weaknesses within the community and create a solution (community needs assessment I). Second, needs assessments which are structured around and seek to address an already known problem or potential problem facing the community (community needs assessment II). Third, needs assessments of an organization which serves the community (domestic violence centers, community health clinics etc.) (community needs assessment III).

Community needs assessments are generally executed in four steps: planning and organizing, data collection, coding and summarizing the needs assessment results, and sharing the results with the community to facilitate action planning. During the planning and organizing phase stakeholders are identified, local organizations and/or local government begin to collaborate.

Community needs assessment I – This type of needs assessment seeks to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses within a community and create or improve services based on the identified weaknesses. Organizing this type of needs assessment is primarily structured around how to best obtain information, opinions, and input from the community and then what to do with that information. This process may be broken into targeted questions which can direct the project overall.

Community needs assessment II – This type of needs assessment is constructed around a known problem or potential problem facing the community for example, disaster preparedness, how to address an increase in violent crime etc. This type of community needs assessment centers less around the direct involvement of the community but rather the governing entities, stakeholders, businesses, advocacy groups and organizations which will be potentially affected or can contribute to the community need.

Community needs assessment III – This final type of needs assessment is based within an organization which either serves the community at large, is currently addressing a need within the community, or is dedicated to an under-served population within the community. This type of needs assessment centers around improving the efficiency or effectiveness of such organizations.

Conduction

According to Sharma, Lanum & Saurez-Balcazar (2000, p. 1) "the goals of a 'needs assessment' is to identify the assets of a community and determine potential concerns that it faces". A needs assessment therefore becomes crucial in the initial stages of an intervention. A needs analysis is focused on identifying the possible barriers to successful program intervention in a community and possibly finding solutions to these challenges. Service providers in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) work are also concerned with assessment and provision of services to different stakeholders. Such services may include an assessment closely related to a needs assessment that focuses on whether current services are effective or not, and if not, identifying the gaps in implementation; or an assessment of whether potential services are likely to be effective once they have been implemented. These assessments highlight the close relationship between needs assessment, monitoring, and evaluation; while each applies similar tools, each also has independent objectives and requires unique skills.

A community level needs assessment is beneficial and crucial to any planned intervention on behalf of communities facing difficulties with regard to some community issue. A community level needs assessment will assist the practitioner to determine the nature and scope of a problem at which an intervention might be aimed, with the aim of finding out what possible interventions might be successful in alleviating the problem. A community needs assessment will also uncover which members of the community are most likely to benefit from a planned intervention and who might not be. Community level needs assessment will also give direction to planners in terms of where resources need to be allocated for the intervention so that they are not wasted.

Consumer leadership

Consumer leadership assessment is an assessment of the frequency with which community members use or are likely to use an existing or planned service.

Example

Burke (2005) examined significant statistics that showed a need within the community of Bayview Hunters Point in order to "identify gaps in service delivery system to create a road map for improving neighborhood conditions by rationalizing the allocation of city dollars to social service programs". For example, in 2003, 174 children were removed from family homes in the Bayview; this is more than 18% of all children removed from their family in San Francisco. The author also looked at the broad-based survey, Project Connect, which gathered data from 10,330 households specifically about their needs for services and current service utilization practices in the summer of 2004. The analysis from 1,551 Bayview households showed that their priorities, in order, are 1) childcare services, 2) health services, 3) tutoring/educational services, 4) immigrant services, 5) foodbank/meal services.

See also

• Environmental impact assessment
• Futures techniques
• Requirements analysis

References

Bibliography

• Kaufman, Roger; Rojas, Alicia M.; Mayer, Hannah (1993). Needs Assessment: A User's Guide. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications.
• Peterson, Donna J.; Alexander, Greg R. (2001). Needs Assessment in Public Health: A Practical Guide for Students and Professionals. Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Environmental Law Institute (1999). Building Capacity to Participate in Environmental Protection Agency Activities: A Needs Assessment and Analysis. Washington, DC: Environmental Law Institute.
• Fulgham, S. M.; Shaughnessy, M. (September–October 2008). "Q & A with Ed Tech Leaders: Interview with Roger Kaufman". Educational Technology. pp. 49–52.
• Watkins, R.; West Meiers, M.; Visser, Y. (2012). A Guide to Assessing Needs: Tools for collecting information, making decisions, and achieving development results. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-0-8213-8868-6. ISBN 978-0-8213-8868-6.
• Sharma, A.; Lanum, M.; Saurez-Balcazar, Y. (2000). A community needs assessment guide: a brief guide on how to conduct a needs assessment. Chicago: Loyola University.
• Rossi, P.H.; Lipsey, M.W.; Freeman, H.E. (2004). Evaluation: a systematic approach (7th ed.). London: Sage. ISBN 9780761908944.
• Gupta, Kavita; Sleezer, Catherine M.; Russ-Eft, Darlene F. (2007). A Practical Guide to Needs Assessment (2 ed.). Pfeiffer. pp. 14–17. ISBN 978-0-7879-8272-0.
• Burke, Garance (2005). Bridging the Gaps: Toward an Efficient Social Service Delivery in Bayview Hunters Point. UC Berkeley: GSPP.

Further reading

• Altschuld, J. W. (2010). The Needs Assessment KIT. (ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. [5 volume series]—outlines a three-phase generic needs assessment model, consisting of Phase I (what's known, getting organized and determining priorities), Phase II (collection of new data), Phase III (designing, implementing, and evaluating solutions).
• Burton, J. & Merrill, P. (1991). Needs assessment: Goals, need and priorities. In L. J. Briggs, K.L. Gustafson, and M.H. Tillman (Eds.), Instructional design: Principles and applications (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology.—Explores developing effective instructional educational material. Four basic elements include: identifying a broad range of potential goals, prioritize goals, identify discrepancies between expected and actual performance, and prioritize actions.
• Gilbert, T. (1978). Human competence: Engineering worthy performance. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Gordon, S. (1994). Systematic training program design: Maximizing effectiveness and minimizing liability. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Hannum, W. & Hansen, C. (1989). Instructional systems development in large organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology—Outline a general steps for a needs assessment to create a training program. Hannum and Hansen suggest identifying the purpose, sample data, and expected impact for each of the following steps: organizational environment, baseline performance data (what's the expected and actual level, target audience, training policy.
• Kaufman, R. (1972). Educational system planning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Kaufman, R. (1992). Strategic planning plus: An organizational guide (Rev. ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Mager, R. F. & Pipe, P. (1997), Analyzing performance problems (3rd ed.). Atlanta, GA: Center for Effective Performance.
• Murk, P.J. & Wells, J.H. (1998). A practical guide to program planning. Training & Development Journal, 42(10), 45–47.
• Nelson, R., Whitener, E., & Philcox, H. (1995). The assessment of end-user training needs. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 38(7) 27–39.
• Ostroff., C & Ford, J.K. (1989). Assessing training needs: Critical levels of analysis. In I.L. Goldstein (Ed.), Training and development in organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Robinson, D.G. & Robinson, J.C. (1995). Performance consulting: Moving beyond training. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.—Applies a performance perspective to needs assessments. The model includes developing a performance relationship map and identifying operational business needs.
• Rossett, Allison (1987). Training Needs Assessment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
• Rothwell, W.J. & Kazanas, H.C. (1992). Mastering the instructional design process: A systematic approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.—Applies typical needs assessment steps to identifying human performance problems, including clarifying objectives, target audience, sampling procedures, data collection methods, instruments and protocols, data analysis methods, and description of action plan based on data found.
• Rummler, G.A. & Brache, A.P. (1990). Improving performance: How to manage the white space on the organization chart. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Witkin, B.R. & Altschuld, J.W. (1995). Planning and conducting needs assessments: A practical guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.—A three-phase model for conducting a needs assessment to fit a variety of situations.