Chapter Two
Conducting a Needs Assessment

In this chapter, we define terms associated with needs assessment, describe how to distinguish between a learning and a performance problem, describe essential steps in developing needs assessment plans, review typical problems likely to arise during needs assessment, suggest ways of overcoming these problems, explain how to identify instructional and noninstructional problems based on needs assessment results, identify approaches to estimating costs and benefits of possible solutions, describe the preparation and dissemination of a needs assessment report, provide a simple case study highlighting important issues in needs assessment, offer advice on judging and justifying needs assessment, address key ethical and cross-cultural issues in conducting needs assessment, and review recent developments in needs assessment.

According to The Standards (Koszalka, Russ-Eft, and Reiser 2013, 24–30), one competency for instructional design is to “conduct a needs assessment in order to recommend appropriate design solutions and strategies.” It is an advanced competency. The performance statements associated with this competency indicate that instructional designers should be able to: “(a) identify varying perceptions of need among stakeholders and the implications of those perceptions (advanced); (b) describe the nature of a learning or performance problem (essential); (c) determine the root causes of identified discrepancies (advanced); (d) synthesize findings to identify and recommend potential instructional and noninstructional solutions (advanced); (e) estimate costs and benefits of possible solutions (advanced); and (f) prepare and disseminate a needs assessment report (advanced).

The needs assessment process is the first step in the traditional instructional systems design process. Needs assessment is important because all subsequent steps in the instructional systems design (ISD) model depend on its results (Rothwell and Sredl 2000).

It is depicted in a circular fashion (Figure 2.1) as a reminder that the entire process is iterative; that is, you can return to and revise any step in the process based on what you've discovered in subsequent steps.

Image described by caption/surrounding text.

Figure 2.1 A Model of Steps in the Instructional Design Process

Source: W. Foshay, K. Silber, and O. Westgaard, Instructional Design Competencies: The Standards (Iowa City: IA: International Board of Standards for Training, Performance, and Instruction, 1986), 3. Copyright © 1993 by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance, and Instruction. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

As has been noted earlier in this publication, instructional designers are now expected to apply a process that identifies needs that can be met with either instructional or noninstructional solutions. The needs assessment process in today's world should be conducted without a preconceived bias toward a training solution. In the past, an instructional designer would normally perceive his or her role as conducting a training needs assessment. Today, however, that same individual is accountable for conducting a performance needs assessment, which greatly expands the needs assessment process.

Before examining the steps required to conduct a needs assessment, several points should be emphasized related to the overall process.

  1. The instructional designer/needs assessor and the client must be very clear about the purpose of the needs assessment. Sometimes clients will be less than candid about the purpose of conducting a needs assessment. An assessment may be conducted to justify a reduction in force or other purposes hidden to the assessor and the people who provide data for the assessment. This presents an ethical challenge for the instructional designer, making it mandatory that the assessor and client establish a contract that specifically states the purpose of the assessment and that any deviations from the contract be made only with the concurrence of both parties.
  2. The term “needs assessment” may carry a negative implicit meaning for those who will be involved. Hannum (2013) points out that, since needs assessments uncovers discrepancies between what is and what should be, it implies that something is lacking in the organization or its employees. Hannum points out that several approaches to organizational improvement (appreciative inquiry, strength finders) focus on what an organization is doing well and attempt to build on everyone's strengths. The needs assessment process can easily be positioned as a tool for this purpose. The language we use to describe the process becomes critical.
  3. While the traditional ISD model has been criticized—and some say it is inappropriate for e-learning or other technologically based instruction—we believe it still serves as a reliable guide. That is a view others share (Beckshi and Doty 2000). The ISD model may be even more important with e-learning and with blended learning than it has been historically for classroom-based instruction (Barbian 2002). One reason is that designing effective e-learning can be costly and time-consuming, and it is important to be sure that problems to be solved really are suitable for an instructional solution. In addition, several instructional design models specifically targeted to designing e-learning or web-based learning are available for today's designers. The purpose of needs assessment is to uncover what the performance problem is, who it affects, how it affects them, and what results are to be achieved by training. However, daunting obstacles must be overcome to perform needs assessment successfully. One obstacle is the perception of top managers that instructional designers or trainers are self-interested parties in the needs assessment process who may stand to benefit from the results by justifying their existence (Bengtson 1994; Rothwell, Lindholm, and Wallick 2003). As the field embraces performance analysis as a skill set, however, this resistance should diminish, because the solution is not hampered by a training-only bias.

A second obstacle is that needs assessment is sometimes thought to take too much time in an age of dynamic change. Allen (2012) points out that a good deal of time and effort is spent on identifying needs and solutions, often without producing the desired results. He notes that “this analysis is often incomplete and inaccurate—almost by necessity because so much ‘nonproductive’ time can be spent on it, relevant data are hard to acquire, available information is often misleading, and situations change while the analysis is underway” (6). A major challenge is balancing rigorous with speedy analysis—despite a growing array of online approaches to provide support for conducting needs assessment.

To add value to the needs assessment process, we have to understand what it is and what it isn't. Muller and Roberts (2010) describe seven myths related to needs assessment and the cure for each (as shown in Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 Myths and Cures

Myth Cure
A training solution is always the cause of a performance problem Conduct a thorough diagnosis to uncover what's likely to be multiple sources of the problem.
Needs assessment takes too long to complete Looks for ways to reduce the needs assessment cycle.
The client will never accept the needs assessment process Collaborate with your client to understand the business better. Focus particularly on line managers.
The needs assessment process is too complex Work with line managers to clearly define the problem and identify the best sources of information.
Needs assessment is too costly Choose the proper method based on your knowledge of the costs of each approach.
We don't have a strong presence with executives Know the business well and talk in business (not training) language.
Training is mandated: no time for a needs assessment Conduct an assessment during training for input into future decisions.

Source: Adapted from “Seven Cures to Skipping the Needs Assessment,” T&D 64 (March 2010): 3.

Wedman (2008) proposes a needs assessment approach he calls the Performance Pyramid. While it is supported by several analytical tools, Wedman emphasizes that needs assessment should be an organic, rather than a mechanistic, process. Close collaboration with your client will help you identify the “path of least resistance.”

He suggests four layers to the process, each adding more value, time, and resources.

  1. Layer 1: “Fix it now.” This layer suggests a limited amount of time to complete an assessment, few resources and, perhaps, limited value in the outcome.
  2. Layer 2: “Fix it soon.” With this layer, more time, resources, and budget may be expended with a greater likelihood of value being achieved.
  3. Layer 3: “Here's your budget and deadline.” Budgets are predetermined and the needs assessor must work within these constraints.
  4. Layer 4: “Lots of time and $$$.” While a rare occurrence, the assessor has an expansive amount of time and resources to conduct a thorough needs assessment, achieving maximum value for the outcome.

To conduct a thorough needs assessment, several terms should be agreed upon to avoid confusion with the process. Let's define those terms before examining the process itself.

Defining Terms

To understand needs assessment, instructional designers should first understand the meaning of key terms associated with it. Such terms include need, needs assessment, needs analysis, training requirements analysis, needs assessment planning, and the needs assessment plan itself.

Need

A need has traditionally been defined as a performance gap separating what people know, do, or feel from what they should know, do, or feel to perform competently. The word “need” should be a noun, not a verb (Kaufman 1986). The reason: when need is a verb in the sentence, “We need some training on time management,” it implies something merely desirable (a want) rather than something essential to competent performance. A need should always be linked to the essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes an individual must possess to perform work competently and accomplish the desired results.

Needs Assessment

A needs assessment “identifies gaps in results, places them in order of priority, and selects the most important for closure or reduction” (Watkins and Kaufman 1996, 13). It is undertaken to “identify, document, and justify gaps between what is and what should be and place the gaps in priority order for closure” (Kaufman 1986, 38). Although such gaps are a traditional starting point for developing instruction (Rothwell and Sredl 2000), analyzing gaps is sometimes fraught with the problem of overlooking the performance levels of experts in a group or organization (Lewis and Bjorkquist 1992).

In a classic discussion, Kaufman and English (1979) identify six types of needs assessment arranged in a hierarchical order of complexity. The first, and least complex, is alpha assessment. It focuses on identifying a performance problem. (An alpha assessment is synonymous with performance analysis.) A beta assessment is the second type. It is based on the assumption that an employee performance problem exists but that alternative solutions must be weighed for their relative cost-benefit and practicality. A gamma assessment, the third type, examines differences between alternative solutions to a performance problem. The fourth type is a delta assessment, and it examines performance gaps between what is and what should be. An epsilon assessment, the fifth type, examines discrepancies between desired and actual results of an event. A zeta assessment is the sixth type. It involves continuous assessment and evaluation in which regular feedback is used to monitor solutions and make corrective changes if they are necessary.

More recently, Kaufman and Guerra-Lopez (2013) emphasize that, from a performance perspective, a needs assessment can focus on several levels of organizational results, including:

  • The strategic level: The impact of external factors (legislation, competition) on the organization.
  • The tactical level: Examining the overall results of the organization (for example, market share, profitability).
  • The operational level: Examining internal deliverables and how effectively and efficiently they are produced.

These various levels underscore what has become a well-known approach to needs assessment called the Organizational Elements Model, or OEM (Kaufman, Thiagarajan, and MacGillis 1997). In this approach, there are five levels at which one may conduct a needs assessment. The first three levels constitute “ends” (that is, products, outputs, impact) while the final two levels represent “means” (that is, how the work gets done):

  • The Mega Level: The results or outcomes that society experiences because of an organization's performance.
  • The Macro Level: The results experienced by the organization itself; for example, sales, profit, market share.
  • The Micro Level: The internal results produced by the organization; for example, number of training programs, numbers of widgets produced, scrap and rework.
  • The Process Level: The efficiency and effectiveness of the organization's internal processes; for example, hiring, training, marketing.
  • The Inputs Level: The assessment of the resources needed (for example, employees, capital, regulations) to operate the organization.

From this discussion, we can see there are several approaches to conducting a needs assessment. Whichever approach is chosen, the next overall step, once the results of the assessment are known, is to conduct a needs analysis.

Needs Analysis

A needs analysis discovers the underlying causes of gaps between the ideal or desirable and the actual. It is usually carried out following a needs assessment. It goes beyond a needs assessment, which merely shows that a performance gap exists, to pinpoint the root cause(s) leading to that gap. Identifying root causes is essential for discovering the best solutions (Rothwell, Benscoter, Park, Woocheol, and Zabellero 2014; Rothwell, Hohne, and King 2000).

Barbazette (2006) identifies the following needs analyses:

  1. Performance (or gap) analysis: Is the issue a skill or knowledge deficiency or something else?
  2. Feasibility analysis: Is the benefit of providing a training solution greater than the cost of the solution?
  3. Needs versus wants analysis: Is the deficiency linked to an actual business need or is it something that one or more stakeholders believe should be the solution?
  4. Goal analysis: What is the specific behavioral improvement that will result from a “fuzzy” want or desire?
  5. Job/task analysis: How should this job or task be done correctly and how do they break down into their component subtasks?
  6. Target population analysis: What do we know about the audience to be trained and might there be other audiences who would benefit from the training?
  7. Contextual analysis: What are the other requirements (that is, beyond the training content) that will influence the success of the training?

If we have determined that the solution to the performance gap is a training solution, we are now prepared to identify the training requirements.

Training Requirements Analysis

Care should be taken to avoid making assumptions too quickly about the causes of gaps. As Watkins and Kaufman (1996, 13) point out, “Although the term ‘training needs assessment’ is popular in the field, it seems to be an oxymoron. If you know that training is the solution, why do a needs assessment? A more accurate label for a ‘training needs assessment’ is 'training requirements analysis.' A training requirements analysis can be a useful and important approach to designing training that will respond to your needs after you have defined them.” A training requirements analysis (TRA) thus specifies exactly what training is necessary.

Needs Assessment Planning

Needs assessment planning means developing a blueprint for collecting needs assessment information. It should not be confused with a needs assessment plan. Planning is a process, while a plan is a product (Rothwell and Cookson 1997). For needs assessment planning to be handled successfully, key line managers and other interested groups should participate in each step of designing the needs assessment plan and interpreting the results. Participation in needs assessment, as in many organizational activities, is essential to building ownership among key stakeholders.

In the broadest sense, needs assessment planning can be categorized into two types: comprehensive and situation-specific.

Comprehensive needs assessment planning is broad, covering large groups inside or outside an organization (Rothwell and Kazanas 1994a). Sometimes called macro needs assessment (Laird 1985), it is appropriate for determining the continuous and relatively predictable training needs of all newly hired workers, since they must be oriented to their jobs. The results of a comprehensive needs assessment are used to establish an organization's curriculum—an instructional plan—covering basic training for each job category. A curriculum provides long-term direction to organized learning activities (Rothwell and Kazanas 1994a, 2003; Rothwell and Sredl 2000).

Situation-specific needs assessment planning is narrower. Sometimes called micro needs assessment (Laird 1985), it is appropriate for correcting a performance problem that affects only a few people. For instance, a micro training need exists when one supervisor reveals no knowledge of “progressive discipline” in firing an employee, but other supervisors possess that knowledge.

More often than not, instructional designers devote their attention to situation-specific needs. There are several reasons. First, relatively few organizations establish an instructional plan or training curriculum across all job categories. They lose the advantages that could be gained by pursuing a long-term direction for instructional activities in the organization. Second, situation-specific needs often have built-in management support. Since the performance problem already exists, has visible symptoms, and affects an identifiable target group, instructional designers find they already have a constituency of interested stakeholders who are eager to support efforts—and furnish resources—to solve the problem.

One primary duty of an instructional designer is to fully know about the instructional assets that exist inside and outside the organization (prior training programs, job-specific documentation, external training, and technical references). The designer must be able to align these resources with the needs of the business. Gendelman (2009) underscores this alignment requirement and points out several advantages for recycling instructional assets:

  1. Enhance the alignment between business needs and current instructional resources.
  2. Increase department budgets by demonstrating the alignment of instructional assets to the needs of the business and its executives.
  3. Decrease the training department's costs for new development, content acquisition, and licensing.

Gendelman (2009) proposes the following steps to ensure alignment between training assets and business goals:

  1. Know your audience well, including prerequisites and motivational factors of the audiences you serve. Create a “Position Road Map” of the audiences you serve, indicating the tasks they perform, the outcomes of their jobs, desired behaviors, and job constraints.
  2. Analyze the existing curricula and identify gaps between the assets in place and the ones you need to close the gaps.
  3. Align the needs of the business with the curriculum assets already in place and any discrepancies that exist.
  4. Make recommendations for instructional material that must be developed or acquired, any assets that must be retired, and those that can be reused.
  5. Implement your recommendations, including acquisition of outside material, asset development, or other recommended actions.
  6. Assess the effectiveness of your revised curriculum and revise as needed.

Now that you've completed the needs assessment, it's time to develop your needs assessment plan. The next section will introduce you to this process.

Needs Assessment Plan

A needs assessment plan is a blueprint for collecting information about instructional needs. A needs assessment plan assumes that sufficient justification already exists to solve a human performance problem. The plan usually resembles a research plan (a proposal for conducting a research study).

A needs assessment plan should usually address seven key issues (Foshay, Silber, and Westgaard 1986, p. 27).

  1. Objectives: What results are desired from the needs assessment?
  2. Target audience: Whose needs will be assessed?
  3. Sampling procedures: What methods will be used to select a representative group of people from the target audience for participation in the needs assessment?
  4. Data collection methods: How will information about needs be gathered?
  5. Specifications for instruments and protocols: What instruments should be used during needs assessment, and how should they be used? What approvals or protocols are necessary for conducting the needs assessment, and how will the instructional designer interact with members of the organization?
  6. Methods of data analysis: How will the information collected during needs assessment be analyzed?
  7. Descriptions of how decisions will be made based on the data: How will needs be identified from the results of data collection and analysis?

The anecdotal evidence available about needs assessment consistently shows that such issues are given varying degrees of emphasis depending on project constraints and stakeholder requirements and expectations.

Steps in Developing Needs Assessment

To develop a needs assessment plan, instructional designers should first clarify why they are doing the assessment. Beyond that, the place to start depends on the problem to be solved, the number of people affected by it, and the time span available for the intended solution. The starting point for an alpha needs assessment (identifying performance problems) is not the same as that for a delta assessment (examining performance gaps between what is and what should be). Likewise, the starting point for a comprehensive needs assessment differs from a situation-specific needs assessment.

Instructional designers who set out to develop a plan for a comprehensive needs assessment adequate for establishing a long-term instructional plan for an organization or an employee job category are embarking on an ambitious undertaking akin to corporate strategic business planning. They should begin by locating a current organization chart and information about strategic business plans, job categories in the organization, common movements from one job category to another (career path maps), existing human performance problems in each job category, and individual training needs. They should then identify, for each job category, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for employees to perform competently. They should use the skills list as the basis for a curriculum by job category, team, department, or geographical site.

Instructional designers who are developing a situation-specific needs assessment plan designed to close a performance gap through instruction should begin by clarifying what they know about it. (For example, see Table 2.2).

Table 2.2 Questions for Developing a Situation-Specific Needs Assessment Plan

Question Related Issues
What is happening now? How are people presently performing?
What results (levels of outputs and quality) are now being achieved?
What should be happening? What are the relevant work standards or performance objectives?
What relationship, if any, exists between the organization's strategic business plan and employee performance?
How do managers and others (such as customers) want people to behave or perform?
What results should be achieved by employees?
How much does management or other stakeholders (such as customers or shareholders) want this idea state to exist?
How wide is the performance
gap between “what is” and
“what should be?”		 How can the gap be measured?
What historical trends are evident?
Is the gap increasing over time?
How important is the
performance gap?		 What effects (consequences) of the gap are evident in the organization?
How does the gap affect individuals inside the targeted group? Outside the targeted group?
How much of the
performance gap is caused
by deficiencies in knowledge,
skills, or attitudes?		 Can the problem be broken down into parts?
Are some parts of the problem (that is, subproblems) caused by deficiencies in knowledge, skills, or attitudes, while others are caused by deficiencies in the environment?
What solutions are cost-
effective and feasible?		 How should subproblems caused by environmental deficiencies be solved?
How should subproblems caused by deficiencies in knowledge, skills, or attitudes be solved?
What unintended side effects
of taking corrective action
can be predicted?		 Will efforts to investigate problems or subproblems change them because people will modify their behaviors during the investigation process?
Will data collection efforts create expectations, realistic or otherwise, about management actions or solutions?
Will decision makers interpret results of needs assessment in conformity with logical conclusions reached, or will they impose their own personal interpretations on results?

Source: W. Rothwell, Beyond Training and Development, 3rd ed. (Amherst, MA: HRD Press, 2015). Used by permission of HRD Press.

Having answered these questions, instructional designers should then move on to establish objectives, identify the target audience, select sampling procedures, decide on data collection methods, specify instruments and protocols, choose methods of data analysis, and describe how decisions will be made based on the data. We now turn to a discussion of each step.

Establishing Objectives of a Needs Assessment

Needs assessment objectives spell out the results sought from needs assessment. In a written needs assessment plan, they should appear immediately after a succinct description of the performance problem to be investigated. Needs assessment objectives, much like instructional objectives, provide direction. They reduce the chance that instructional designers might get sidetracked studying tangential issues during the assessment process. In addition, they also clarify why the problem is worth solving and what the ideal assessment outcomes will be.

To establish needs assessment objectives, instructional designers should begin by clarifying what results are to be achieved from the needs assessment. This is a visioning activity that should produce a mental picture of the desired conditions existing at the end of the assessment process. Once the vision has been formulated, instructional designers should then write a short (one- to two-page) proposal for conducting the needs assessment. This proposal should be a selling tool and submitted as a formal request. Most important, it should build ownership for the assessment among key decision makers.

Results can be thought of in several ways. One desirable result of needs assessment is agreement among stakeholders about what the needs are and what instruction should meet them. A second desirable result is a sense of what learners must know, do, or feel to overcome the deficiency of knowledge causing the performance problem. A third and final result is a clear sense of the final work product of the needs assessment. By thinking about the final work product, instructional designers clarify just how the results should be presented to stakeholders. Should the needs assessment results be described in a detailed report, a memo, a letter, an executive briefing, an electronic mail message, a website, or some combination?

Objectives can take different forms in a needs assessment plan. They can be presented as questions about a performance problem, statements of desired results, or statistically testable hypotheses. Questions are appropriate when the aim is to use information collected during needs assessment to stimulate organizational change. Statistically testable hypotheses are appropriate only when assessment will be carried out with extraordinary rigor and the information collected during assessment will be subjected to statistical analysis. Any legitimate resource on social science research will contain sections on establishing “research objectives,” a topic that can be readily translated into advice about preparing “needs assessment objectives.”

Identifying the Target Audience

Whose instructional needs are to be addressed in solving the performance problem? Who must be persuaded by the results of the needs assessment to authorize instructional projects and provide resources for carrying them out? To answer these questions, instructional designers must identify target audiences. Any needs assessment really has at least two target audiences: performers and decision makers.

Performers are employees whose instructional needs will be identified through the needs assessment process. They correspond to subjects in a research project. Any needs assessment must identify who is affected by the performance problem, how much they are affected, and where they are located. In micro training needs assessment projects focusing on a single work unit, it may be possible to identify only a few individuals whose needs should be examined. But in most macro training needs assessment projects, it will be necessary to consider instructional needs by employee job categories or departments. Each job class may be viewed as a different market segment for instruction, and each segment may differ in needs. If human performance problems stem from lack of employee knowledge about such organizational “rules” as dress code or hours of work, employees may lack knowledge, while supervisors, managers, or team members may lack knowledge of how to deal with the corrective action stemming from those problems.

Decision makers are the individuals whose support will be crucial if the needs assessment plan is to be carried out successfully. They may include instructional designers who will use results of the needs assessment and supervisors of employees who will receive instruction. It is essential to identify who will receive results of the needs assessment, because their personal values and beliefs will affect the interpretation of the results.

Specifying Instruments and Protocols

Data collection and analysis tools and procedures will be discussed in Chapter 6 of this publication. There are very important considerations related to these tools that should be considered in developing a comprehensive needs assessment plan. This section of the chapter will focus on these two considerations.

The needs assessment plan should answer the following questions:

  1. What instruments should be used during the needs assessment, and how should they be used?
  2. What approvals or protocols are necessary for conducting the needs assessment, and how will the instructional designer interact with members of the organization?

These questions must be addressed in a needs assessment plan. The first has to do with specifying instruments, a topic covered in Chapter 6; the second has to do with specifying protocol.

Protocol means diplomatic etiquette and must be considered in planning needs assessment. It stems from organizational culture—the unseen rules guiding organizational behavior. “Rules” should be interpreted as the means by which instructional designers will carry out the needs assessment, interact with the client, deliver results, interpret them, and plan action based on them. In developing the needs assessment plan, instructional designers should seek answers to such questions as these:

  • With whom in the organization should the instructional designer interact during the needs assessment? (How many people? For what issues?)
  • Whose approval is necessary to collect information? (For example, must the plant manager at each site grant approval for administering a questionnaire?)
  • To whom should the results of the needs assessment be reported? To whom should periodic progress reports be provided, if desired at all?
  • How have previous consultants interacted with the organization? What did they do well, or what mistakes did they make, according to managers in the organization?
  • What methods of delivering results are likely to get the most serious consideration? (For instance, will a lengthy written report be read?)

Instructional designers should always remember that the means by which needs assessment is carried out can influence the results and the willingness of the client to continue the relationship. It is important to use effective consulting skills appropriately.

Assessing the Feasibility of the Needs Assessment Plan

Before finalizing the needs assessment plan, instructional designers should review it with three important questions in mind: (1) Can it be done with the resources available? (2) Is it workable in the organizational culture? (3) Has all superfluous information been eliminated from the plan?

It makes little sense to prepare an ambitious plan that cannot be carried out due to lack of resources, or accelerated project timelines with ridiculously short deadlines. Careful thought must be given to the resources.

Instructional designers should ponder the following issues.

  • Given the draft needs assessment plan, what resources will be necessary to implement it successfully?
  • How many and what kind of people will be required to staff the effort?
  • What equipment and tools will they need?
  • How long will it take to conduct the needs assessment?
  • What limitations on staff, money, equipment, or access to information are likely to be faced, and is the needs assessment plan realistic in light of resources and likely constraints?

Just as it makes little sense to establish an ambitious needs assessment plan that cannot be carried out with the resources available, it also makes little sense to plan a needs assessment not supported by the organizational culture. The following questions are also worth consideration.

  • How are decisions made in the organization, and how well does the needs assessment plan take the organization's decision-making processes into account?
  • Whose opinions are most valued, and how well does the needs assessment plan consider their opinions?
  • How have organizational members solved problems in the past, and how well does the needs assessment plan take the organization's past experience with problem solving into account?

Finally, superfluous information should be eliminated from the needs assessment plan, needs assessment processes, and reports on the results. The acid test for useful information has to do with the persuasion that is necessary. Complex plans are unnecessary when decision makers require little information to be convinced of an instructional need. Too much information will only distract decision makers, drawing their attention away from what is important. Simplicity is more powerful and elegant.

Developing a Needs Assessment Plan: A Case Study

Josephine Smith is the training director at a large Midwestern bank. She was recently hired for this job. As her first assignment, she was asked to review correspondence leaving the bank. Key officers of the bank have a problem of (in the words of one) “providing a tone in our correspondence that we put customer service first in whatever we do.”

Josephine conducted an initial performance analysis (an alpha needs assessment) and found that the “problem” has several components. Each component she calls a “subproblem.”

First, the bank uses form letters for most routine correspondence. Loan officers commonly send out these form letters, which were not written with an emphasis on a good “customer service tone.” This subproblem is a deficiency in the environment, and Josephine has asked the key officers to form a committee to review the letters and eventually revise them. They have agreed. Second, Josephine's investigation reveals that employees at the bank do not know how to write correspondence with an adequate “customer service” tone. This sub-problem is a training need.

Josephine set out to assess training needs by analyzing common problems appearing in nonroutine correspondence sent from the bank. She uses the results of this situation-specific, gamma-type needs assessment to identify the gap between what is (letters as written) and what should be (letters as they should be written). She will use that information in establishing instructional objectives for training that will furnish loan officers—her target audience—with the knowledge they need to write letters in desired ways.

Josephine begins needs assessment planning by proposing to her immediate superiors a review of special letters recently mailed from the bank by loan officers. These letters will be compared to criteria, set forth on a checklist, for letters exhibiting an adequate customer service tone. This checklist (an instrument) will be prepared by a committee comprising Josephine and several key managers in the bank. (The first step in developing the checklist will involve clarification of just what does and what does not constitute a good customer service tone, a phrase too vague to provide guidance in establishing concrete instructional objectives.) The same committee will then use the checklist to review letters and identify the frequency of common problems of tone in the letters. It will use the results to prioritize training objectives for loan officers.

Solving Problems in Conducting Needs Assessments

Planning a needs assessment poses one challenge. Conducting the needs assessment—implementing the plan—poses another. While logic and research rigor are typically emphasized in the planning stage, everyday pressures to achieve quick results and hold down costs most keenly affect instructional designers during the implementation stage. However, implementation problems can usually be minimized if the plan has been stated and key decision makers have received advance notice of the plan and its pending implementation. The chances for success increase even more if key decision makers participate in developing the plan and feel ownership in it.

When implementing the needs assessment plan, instructional designers should at least be able to apply tactics to ensure successful implementation. Tactics, perhaps best understood as approaches used in day-to-day operations, are necessary for dealing with common problems typically arising during implementation of a needs assessment plan. These problems include (a) managing sample selection, (b) collecting data while not creating false expectations, (c) avoiding errors in protocol, and (d) limiting participation in interpreting needs assessment results.

Selecting a sample is usually simple enough. But contacting people or finding the “cases” selected is not always so simple. Sometimes people selected are not available because of absences from the job, pressures from work assignments and deadlines, or unwillingness to participate. “Cases”—such as documents or work samples—may be unavailable because they are being used for other reasons or are geographically beyond easy reach.

The more employees who provide data about instructional needs, the higher people's expectations will be that corrective action in the organization will take place. This expectation of change can be a positive force—an impetus for progressive change—when action quickly follows data collection and is visibly targeted on problems that many people believe should receive attention. However, the reverse is also true: the act of collecting data can be demoralizing when corrective action is delayed or when key managers appear to ignore the prevailing views of prospective learners about the direction for desired change. To overcome this problem, instructional designers can limit initial data collection efforts to small groups or to geographically restricted ones to hold down the number of people whose expectations are raised.

Errors in protocol can also plague needs assessment efforts. Perhaps the most common one is the instructional designer's failure to receive enough—or the right—permissions to collect data. To overcome this problem, instructional designers should discuss the organization's formal (or informal) policies on data collection with key decision makers in the organization before sending out questionnaires, interviewing employees, or appearing in work units to observe job activities. They should make sure they have secured all necessary approvals before collecting data. Failure to take this step can create significant, and often unfortunate, barriers to cooperation in the organization. It may derail the entire needs assessment effort.

Some instructional designers like to think of themselves as powerful change agents technically proficient in their craft and who, like skilled doctors, should “prescribe the right medicine to cure the ills” of the organization. Unfortunately, this approach is not always effective because it does not allow decision-makers to develop a sense of ownership in the solutions. They may think of the solution as “something dreamed up by those instructional designers.” To avoid this problem, instructional designers may form a committee of key managers to review the raw data and detailed results of their needs assessment before proposing a corrective action plan. Committee members go over the data and the analytical methods used. They are then asked for their interpretations and suggested solutions.

This approach serves several useful purposes. First, it builds an informed constituency among the audience for the needs assessment report. Members of that constituency will grasp, perhaps better than most, how conclusions were arrived at. Second, they review raw data (occasionally, striking anecdotes or handwritten comments on questionnaires have a persuasive force that statistical results do not). Third, by giving members of the committee an opportunity to interpret results on their own, instructional designers build support for the needs assessment's results.

Identifying Instructional Problems

Instructional designers should be capable of pinpointing instructional problems based on needs assessment results. The key to identifying instructional problems is the needs assessment plan itself. It should clarify what performance is desired and provide criteria by which to determine how well people are performing, how well people should perform, and how much difference there is between the two. By remembering what results are sought throughout the needs assessment process, instructional designers can prepare themselves for identifying instructional needs.

One way to identify instructional needs is to focus, over the course of the needs assessment, on tentative needs that are discernible during the data collection process. To keep track, instructional designers may wish to use a needs assessment sheet. It is a structured way of recording instructional needs for subsequent review. Accountants use similar sheets when conducting financial, compliance, management, or program results audits. While the final results of the needs assessment may confirm these needs, the needs assessment sheets provide a means by which instructional designers can communicate with team members. They are also very helpful because they often suggest ways to organize the needs assessment report.

Ethical Issues in Needs Assessment

A key ethical challenge in applying needs assessment can be expressed by this question: Can the needs assessment withstand charges it was not cost-effective, timely, or rigorous?

Most instructional designers will find that their internal or external clients are not well-versed on what needs assessment is, why it should be conducted, how it should be conducted, or how long it should take. One manager has told an instructional designer that “If you have to take time to investigate the problem, then you are not aware of our business challenges and should seek employment elsewhere.” While that view may be wrongheaded, it underscores the need for instructional designers to educate their clients about what they do and to justify every step.

To support a needs assessment, instructional designers should brief their clients on the instructional design process at the outset of their engagement. Needs assessment should be described for what it is—a way to economize efforts by targeting only the instruction that is necessary to solve or avert human performance problems. That will save time and money by avoiding investments in “sheep-dip training” that exposes all people to the same instruction despite unique individual or group needs.

In a survey (Rothwell 2003), one respondent pointed to needs assessment and needs analysis as a frequent cause from which ethical challenges stemmed. The respondent bewailed that “it is often described as something that should be relentlessly and systematically done, but we are often pushed to action without the minimum analysis information.” There is a difference between what is contractually required and what is “right” (Hatcher 2002)—a major ethical dilemma encountered by those working in today's frenetically paced organizations.

Assessing Needs Cross-Culturally

Needs assessment is prone to the same cross-cultural issues as performance analysis. Just as political climate can help or hinder performance analysis, so too can it help or hinder needs assessment. While no silver bullet exists to avoid all problems in all settings, a cultural informant should be identified and consulted before a needs assessment is conducted in a culture with which the instructional designer is unfamiliar. Cultural informants should be trustworthy and familiar with the local culture. In addition, they should understand why a needs assessment is important.

Cultural informants should also be consulted about the language abilities of those targeted for participation in needs assessment and other cultural variables. For instance, if an instructional designer wants to administer a written needs assessment questionnaire, it will usually be necessary to determine in advance what language skills are possessed by those targeted to complete the questionnaire. It will also be necessary to determine whether the questionnaire should be written in English, the native tongue of the targeted participants, or both. (Translated questionnaires introduce a host of new requirements, too, such as the need to check translation accuracy.) Similarly, local customs—or the availability of technology—may also affect applications of other data collection methods. For instance, observation may prove distracting and troublesome to individuals in some cultures, so special steps may be necessary to make it work as intended. If web-based questionnaires are administered, Internet speed may well be a consideration that will affect the outcome.

The conclusion that the reader should draw from this chapter is that the entire process of needs assessment is undergoing a transformation that's being driven by global factors affecting the instructional design field. These factors include (a) the need to integrate the entire training and development process more closely with the business, (b) increasing resource challenges (human and capital) that require substantial justification to grow or even maintain capability, (c) an increase in the demand to produce effective solutions in a shorter period of time, and (d) the role that advanced technology will continue to play in all aspects of the instructional design process, from needs assessment through evaluation.

All these factors will continue to put pressure on today's instructional designer to develop himself or herself professionally, not only in the instructional design field specifically, but in understanding the influences placed on business.

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