A practical guide to needs assessment

Abstract

A well-planned needs assessment is an essential element to initiating a successful organizational performance improvement project. There are many theoretical frameworks on needs assessment; however, most of the current models are shortsighted, deficiency-oriented, and advocate training-based approaches that are not very practical to implement in real organizational settings. Gupta's A Practical Guide to Needs Assessment is an important work bridging the divide between theory and practice, and it is written in a reader-friendly manner. Research on Needs AssessmentIn general, a need is defined as a gap or discrepancy between a present state and a desired state. Typically, the needs assessment process is used to identify and measure gaps between what is and what ought to be, prioritize the gaps, and determine which of the gaps to work on to obtain closure. However, the concept has been attacked as being too fuzzy and negative (Witkin, 1991) and criticized as focusing on deficits and weakness instead of strengths (Roth, 1978). Furthermore, each needs assessment expert has developed different frameworks.For example, Sleezer (1993) interprets needs assessment and analysis as being basically the same process. However, Kaufman and English (1975) propose an overarching needs assessment methodology after distinguishing among needs assessment and analysis processes. And Rossett (1997) defines needs assessment as a method for finding training interventions.Even though each of these approaches has its own strengths, researchers tend to emphasize identifying the gap rather than developing interventions to close the gap.Hence, indepth analysis tools or methodologies for identifying the gap correctly and efficiently are to be employed. It can take quite a bit of time to follow step-by-step procedures for conducting a needs assessment project. The more complicated the needs assessment methodologies, the harder it is for practitioners to apply them to real organizational contexts. The gap between theoretical frameworks and practical

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“…La evaluación de necesidades consta, a su vez, de diversas etapas (Gupta, 1999), que consisten en: a) Obtención de información mediante diversas técnicas (encuesta, entrevista profundidad, etc.). b) Integración (estadística, lógica, teórica, etc.)…”

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“…Training needs assessment can also be used to identify the learning and performance needs of personnel, functional units, teams, and whole organization (Gupta, 2011).…”