A Primer on Needs Assessment: More Than 40 Years of Research and Practice

Abstract

This chapter consists of an overview of needs assessment's rich history, definitions, models, tools, and techniques. These closely align its theory, research, and practice to several associated fields—most notably strategic planning and evaluation. The highlights of the content include a comparison to—and differentiation from—evaluation, a brief timeline of the recent history of the field, the notable emergence of hybrid assessment and asset/capacity building approaches, some discussion of opposition to needs assessment, and a description of two prominent models that guide what assessors do. The summary captures the dynamic nature of the enterprise and how it is evolving.

Job Training Satisfaction, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance

“…Effective training practices involving the use of a training design process begin with a needs assessment [4,8,18]. A need is a measureable gap between two conditions-what currently is and what should be [20]. In order to define the gap of need in training, a complete assessment process should be conducted to figure out problem areas, issues, or difficulties that should be resolved [20].…”

“…A need is a measureable gap between two conditions-what currently is and what should be [20]. In order to define the gap of need in training, a complete assessment process should be conducted to figure out problem areas, issues, or difficulties that should be resolved [20]. Thus, a training needs assessment refers to the process used to determine whether training is necessary and why specific training activities are required [4,8].…”

“…Thus, a training needs assessment refers to the process used to determine whether training is necessary and why specific training activities are required [4,8]. In most contexts, a needs assessment focuses on gaps rather than solutions [20]. Theoretically, it involves three levels of analysis: organizational analysis, person analysis, and task analysis.…”

Towards a prioritization of needs to support decision making in organizational change processes

“…Regarding psychology, the most prominent account that includes a prioritization of needs is Maslow's hierarchy of needs [19], [20]. In the socio-political discourse, a prioritization of needs is derived from the harm it causes if it remains unsatisfied [14], [21]- [23]. When needs are defined as instrumental necessity for a purpose as in marketing [13], [24] or software development [25], specific methods like conjoint analysis [26], quality function deployment [26] or the house of quality [27], [28] can be used for prioritization.…”

Exploration of contextual factors influencing perceptions amongst officials in Singapore social sector ministries towards program evaluation

“…There are several purposes mentioned in Q3l that did not fall naturally into any of the six proposed by Patton. However, some Western scholars and evaluation practitioners advocate for these purposes, e.g., organizational learning (Preskill & Torres, 1999;Russ-Eft, 2001), needs assessment (Altschuld & Watkins, 2014;Engle & Altschuld, 2014) and building evaluation capacity (Cousins, Goh, Elliott, & Bourgeois, 2014;King, 2007). Developmental evaluation is a relatively new approach being advocated by Patton (2010) and others.…”