Planning and Conducting Needs Assessments

A Practical Guide

Despite the increasing necessity for needs assessments in a variety of fields, much confusion still prevails on how to conduct such assessments successfully. This book is a practical guide to that end.

The authors first introduce a three-phase model - preassessment, assessment and postassessment - to clarify the distinctions between the needs of primary service recipients and the people and resources that exist because of them. They go on to describe methods appropriate for gathering data for assessing needs and for causal analysis. The presentation of the framework, the coverage of several approaches for analyzing data, the balanced description of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and the multiple case studies and examples will enable students and practitioners to conduct needs assessment in fields such as health care, psychology, sociology, education, public administration and urban planning.