Colorado Technical University Program Design and Development Response

Response Guidelines

Read the posts of the other learners and respond to the initial post of at least one. Provide an argument to justify to another stakeholder the cost and effort of completing a needs assessment. Suggest ways to increase the probability that the findings of a needs assessment will be valid.

Student post down below:

COLLAPSE

According to (Mars & Helge, 2012) a needs assessment may be used to develop program standards as a process of formative evaluation and as a process of summative evaluation. The author’s further state that the needs assessment process utilizes principles of organization development, including involvement of all levels of individuals within the organization and developing congruency between individual and organizational needs and goals. Calley ( 2011), state that needs assessments identify social problems and ensure services, programs, and policies are responsive to the community’s needs. Moreover, Calley states, “ Needs assessment is a systematic process where data is collected on social problems and prioritized for change. The concept is to identify essential resources and determine how to obtain, develop, and use those resources.” Thus, when necessary steps in the needs assessment are missed, program standards and positive desired outcomes may be deficient. Additionally, evidence-based data may be flawed resulting in missed opportunities for grant and other subsidized funding and supports.In the article, Conducting Needs Assessments the author states that conducting a needs assessment is a systematic approach that seeks information from clients or participants as a source to service a gap or need to a societal, personal, economic, or environmental issues (Kellerman, 2008). The author further states that the must be addressed and that requires some planned actions to have a positive impact on improving or changing the identified situation (Kellerman, 2008). The following resources provide information on conducting needs assessments (Kellerman, 2008).In the text, Designing and Managing programs, the author stated, “The first official definition in the human services arena was introduced when the federal government consolidated a number of human service block grant (Kettner et al 2017)”. The authors further stated that the legislation that was introduced defined human services as a need as any identifiable condition that limits a person or individual or a family member in meeting his or her full potential. These needs are usually expressed in social, economic, or health-related terms and are frequently qualitative statements (Kettner et al 2017).