Community Needs Assessment Tools

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Community Needs Assessment Tools
Adapted from Charlie French Community
Economic Development Specialist
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Community

• A body of persons having a common history,
  ethnicity, culture, geography, or interests.
• Communities of Place Defined by distinct
  boundaries and bound by a common political,
  economic and social system.
• Communities of Interest A group of individuals
  that share common interests, goals, or knowledge
  about something.

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Community Needs Assessment

• A way of gauging opinions, assumptions, needs,
  key issues, and/or assets within a defined
  community.

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Needs Assessment Why do it?

• Identify community needs, concerns and issues
• Target outreach programs
• Empower grass-roots Action around needs
• Determine if needs have changed?
• Collect communities hopes/dreams/desires

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Community Assessment Tools

• Focus Group Interview
• Public Issues Forum
• Secondary Data Analysis
• Community Survey Questionnaire
• Interviews
• Asset Mapping

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• Focus Group Interview
• The focus group is a way to gather the opinions/
  ideas from a small, targeted group of citizens.
  The intention of focus groups is perhaps more to
  build a synergy of thoughts and ideas than it is
  to make projections about the community.

• Advantages
• easy to conduct
• Provides detailed info
• allows for issue probing
• stimulates thinking and discussion

• Disadvantages
• ideas generated not necessarily prevalent
• small sample for effort
• difficult to analyze
• quiet folks suppressed
• requires participation

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• Public Issues Forum
• Community forums are public meetings that involve
  residents to express their concerns about
  community issues, problems, and needs.

• Advantages
• Diverse members can share ideas
• Provides quick look at community issues
• involves local citizens
• inexpensive

• Disadvantages
• requires skill/time
• opinions obtained only from those who attend
• may generate more questions or conflict

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Steps Preparing for the Forum

• Form representative steering committee (5-15
  people)
• Identify pressing issue(s) to form the focus of
  forum
• Select a trained facilitator
• 4. Set a time and place
• Seating arrangement should encourage dialogue
• have appropriate acoustics (i.e., microphone)
• make sure the location is neutral (school is a
  great place)
• Publicize the forum
• Hit all the major media outlets

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Steps Conducting the Forum Event

• Facilitator outlines process, what the results
  will be used for, and their role as facilitator.
• Do an ice-breaker to build trust.
• Brainstorm The purpose of brainstorming is to
  generate ideas (if issues have already been
  identified go to step 5)
• Prioritize issues (you may want to do this via
  voting)
• Once issues have been identified, next step is to
  mobilize action groups (allow time for groups to
  meet and plan).
• Provide each group with action planner worksheet
  which gets them to write goal, objectives,
  planned activities, timeline, and persons
  responsible for activities.

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Steps Followup after the Forum

• 1. Develop a written report
• If action is the goal, the report may be used as
  the basis for a plan
• If change in policy is the goal, the report
  should emphasize priorities or final decisions.
• 2. Disseminate the report using multi-media

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• Secondary Data Analysis
• Secondary data is data that is collected about a
  particular audience without having direct contact
  with that audience. It can often provide insight
  about emerging trends or issues in a particular
  community.

.

• Advantages
• data already exists
• fast easy to access
• data available for many geographic levels

• Disadvantages
• representative sample may not be accurate
• gaps in data
• requires inferences
• Lack of Data Richness

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• Community Survey
• Community surveys help one to gather
  info about local attitudes regarding precisely
  defined issues, problems or opportunities.
  Surveys may be open ended or multiple choice.

• Advantages
• wide distribution
• good for data analysis
• strong sample of the population

• Disadvantages
• expensive
• requires skill/time
• suffers low return rate
• poor qualitative tool

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Build a Survey on the Web

• The University of Marylands Dept. of Psychology
  has an extensive collection of resource tools for
  building surveys as well as an an on-line
  survey-builder. Moreover, the website provides
  tutorials regarding measurement scales,
  appropriate statistics, and survey design.
• http//lap.umd.edu/survey_design/index.html

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• Interviews
• An interview is a conversation with a purpose,
  designed to help you gather information about
  peoples assumptions/perceptions of activities in
  your community. They are useful when looking for
  in-depth information on a particular topic.

• Advantages
• detailed information
• allows for clarification/ followup on questions
• personal contact builds rapport

• Disadvantages
• Time-consuming
• requires skill/time
• Information is hard to summarize
• Little quantitative value

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Steps in an Interview Process

• Form a Steering Committee to guide process
• Determine who is to be interviewed
• Select a skilled Interviewer
• Select questions
• Decide on an interview format/delivery method
• Formal or informal structure
• Face-to-face, telephone, or email delivery
• Inform the participants
• Practice
• Steer / guide the interview session (take notes)
• Write a summary report
• Thank the interviewees

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Developing and Asking Interview Questions

• Dont ask defensive questions.
• Avoid the two-in-one question.
• Avoid complex questions.
• Keep it short.
• Focuses on most important findings
• Dont try to put too much in it

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• Asset Mapping

Asset mapping is a technique for cataloguing
local community assets/resources to meet
community objectives. The goal is to identify
and utilize assets to better the community rather
than to focus on problems and needs.

• Advantages
• Focuses on what community already has.
• Provides diverse look at community assets.
• Involves multiple stakeholders.

• Disadvantages
• Community assets may not match key issues.
• People tend to respond to crises rather than
  possibilities.

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Assets Come in Many Forms

• Human Assets
• Associational Assets
• Institutional Assets
• Local Business Assets
• Outside Resources

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Asset-Based Community Development
Step 1 Form a Steering Committee
Step 8 Identify Opportunities Mobilize Community
Step 2 Commit Resources
Step 7 Cross Reference Needs with Assets
Step 3 Identify your Community
Step 6 Develop Resource List
Step 4 Decide on Inventory Method
Step 5 Administer Asset Assessment Tool
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Asset Mapping Resources

• - Vitalizing Communities, 1999. J. Allen, S.
  Cordes, and J. Hart.
• - The Center for Applied Rural Innovation
  (CARI) at the University of Nebraska.
• Asset Based Community Development Institute,
  Northwestern University http//www.nwu.edu/IPR/ab
  cd.html
• - Other Community Development Links
  http//www.uwfv.bc.ca/commdev.htm

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Community Asset Inventory
1. Personal Skills Inventory 2.
Institution/Organization/Business Inventory 3.
Previous Efforts Inventory 4. Community
Development Opportunities 5. Development of a
Plan
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Factors for Choosing your Assessment Tool

• Purpose of Assessment
• Type of Data Needed
• Time Commitment
• Cost
• Skills needed
• Target Audience
• Sources of Bias

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Review Steps for Conducting an Assessment

• 1. Form a Steering Committee
• 2. What need(s)/issue(s) are you addressing?
• 3. Determine the community you are assessing.
• 4. Determine assessment tool
• 5. Develop a plan (who, what, when, where, how).
• 6. Implement the assessment tool (see next page)
• 7. Analyze the results
• 8. Report the results
• 9. Implement or instigate follow-through

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Using the Web to Administer Assessments

• The internet is increasingly being used to
  administer surveys and other types of needs
  assessments. Programs, such as Cold Fusion,
  enable one to build interactive web interfaces.
  In other words, as people fill out surveys on the
  web, the information is sent directly to a
  central spreadsheet where it can be analyzed on
  an ongoing basis. Web surveys are ideally suited
  to statewide or national assessments where
  on-the-ground techniques might be difficult.

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Presenting the Data

• Clear and Concise
• Combine numbers with text and graphics
• Focuses on most important findings
• Dont try to put too much in it