How To Conduct a Needs Assessment
Assessing the needs of your community doesn't necessarily need to involve hosting a large, complicated or expensive focus group. Conducting informal interviews or meetings with other community organizations and/or influential individuals is a great way to start improving your understanding of what services and programs are missing in your community for adult learners. Here are some ideas to get you started:
1) Interview Key Community Leaders
Engaging and interviewing key community members, business owners and municipal leaders who are knowledgeable about the community will help you to first confirm the resources that currently exist and then to identify gaps in learning programs and services in the community.
2) Interview Learners
Talk to learners who have participated in your programming, as well as those who have not. This will also help you identify individual learner needs, and identify barriers that may exist for those who have not yet participated.
3) Small Focus Groups
Focus groups allow you to target specific groups (immigrants, Indigenous populations, literacy learners, low income learners, etc.).
4) Community Forum
The purpose of a community forum is to gather input on the existing gaps and how to prioritize them. It also provides you with an opportunity to identify and leverage the opportunities for collaboration that exist within the community.
5) Interview Community Employers
The purpose of an employer interview is to learn more about the skills needed for the jobs they hire for. During the interview you can discover where they might see skill shortages, what entry level skills are needed, and any interest they may have in workplace training programs.
- Take lots of notes, and keep them! There could be long periods of time between conducting a focus group and hosting a community forum for example. It's important to be able to remember what you've learned along the way and to share your findings with others.
- Plan your questions in advance, whether conducting one-on-one interviews or hosting a community forum. You could start with the key questions in the templates above as a guide. Feel free to modify or add to the list with your own ideas.
- For a complete guide to conducting a community needs assessment, check out the Taber and District Community Adult Learning Association's Learner Support Services pilot project in 2016.
- The Practitioner's Toolkit - Community Needs Assessment on Pages 13 - 38
- Learner Support Services - A How To Guide on Pages 24 - 37