Planning and Conducting Needs Assessments
A Practical Guide
- Belle Ruth Witkin - Anthropology, University of Washington, USA
- James W. Altschuld - The Ohio State University, USA
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.
Needs assessments are a critical part of our evaluation work and what we want our students to feel confident doing when they complete our program. This book was helpful.