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Needs assessment seems intuitively attractive to planners. Virtually all authors recommend that needs assessment be the first step in any organizational or human resource development intervention. Planners sensibly recognize the importance of building a foundation grounded in data-based needs, and see data produced by needs assessment as justifying organizational planning and accountability They also see the usefulness of needs assessments for obtaining and allocating resources for projects. in their best use, needs assessments ensure that resources (Inputs) and methods (Processes) deliver useful results, that their value-added can be demonstrated. Unfortunately, the wide and varied usage of the term need often spurs heated discussions that can hinder the usefulness of so-called needs assessments. Unfortunately, just about any approach to finding direction gets called needs assessment, thus leaving in question what the technique really includes and what it can do and deliver.
Definition of Needs Assessment
In the past three decades, dozens of models for needs assessment have been suggested and implemented with varying success (Watkins, Leigh, Platt, and Kaufman, 1998). The proliferation of models, however, has also been accompanied by conflicting usage of key terminology by proponents of the differing models. Due to this ambiguity, needs assessment can now mean, in the popular lexicon, nearly anything for both theorists and practitioners alike. It is perhaps a bit like Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party, where "words mean anything I want them to, nothing more and nothing less." So that the models we provide here can be considered from a common perspective, we offer a precise and holistic definition of need and needs assessment:
Needs assessment is the formal process of identifying needs as gaps between current and desired results, placing those needs in priority order based on the cost to meet each need versus the cost for ignoring it, and selecting the most important needs (problems or opportunities) for reduction or elimination [Kaufman 1992, 1998].
This definition differs from other, more generously worded definitions of needs assessment in a number of ways. First, it emphasizes that needs are gaps in results rather than gaps or deficiencies in processes or resources. Thus, according to this definition, the perceived lack of personnel, finances, or training are not needs. Instead, needs are gaps in individual, small group,...