6 Conducting a Needs Assessment
The first phase in creating a Research Data Services program is to find out everything you can regarding the current situation: what is already being taught, existing partnerships, who is involved, and what conferences and trainings people have attended. This will give you a solid footing on which to begin building your Research Data Services program, but this data by itself is not particularly actionable. It helps you get a clear picture of where you are, but doesn’t necessarily help you know where to go next. A Needs Assessment can help you find out what your Library and University need and how you can best address these needs.
Hosting a Dinner Party
Picture this scenario: You have friends coming over for dinner in a week, and you want to make sure everything is just right. You know what you have in your kitchen and you know what you like to eat, but over the past few days you have been receiving a barrage of messages from your guests:
- “I’m gluten-free. Do you have any desserts I could eat?”
- “Will there be any vegetarian options for the main course?”
- “Super excited for the dinner! My doctor said I have to cut down on dairy. Just wanted to let you know.”
- “Do you mind if I bring my brother? I know it’s last minute but he just told me he would be visiting this weekend.”
This presents some challenges for you as you get everything ready for the big event. You already have a pretty good understanding of your current situation, and now you have a much better idea of what the dinner itself will look like. Now you have to figure out the missing pieces that are needed to bridge the gap and pull off a successful dinner party, and one way to do that is by conducting a Needs Assessment.
A Needs Assessment is a process that involves gathering data to find out what pieces are missing between your current situation and your goal. When planning a dinner party with friends who have specific dietary requirements you almost certainly can’t pull off the event with what you currently have, but you might not know everything you need. To start your needs assessment you would gather data by looking through your kitchen cupboards and pantries to see what ingredients you already have. This would give you information on what to purchase at the store, or ask friends to bring, to help fill the gaps between what you are currently capable of cooking and the end goal of a fun social get-together. Of course you could head right to the local market and start filling up a shopping cart, but this would inevitably lead to food being purchased that you do not need, and money being wasted buying items that your guests can’t eat. Similarly, when building an RDS program, a Needs Assessment is is a formal process for identifying what will fill in the identified gaps in services so you can create programming that fills in those gaps.
Finding What You Need
The same idea holds true when building an RDS Program. Conducing a Needs Assessment will help you identify what is missing from your current situation so you can begin targeting specific programs, processes, trainings, and other elements that will need to be created. You can gather this data internally by visiting with people on your team, in your department, in the Library, and within the campus
A Needs assessment is defined as a “systematic set of procedures undertaken for the purpose of setting priorities and making decisions about program or organizational improvement and allocation of resources” (Witkin & Altschuld, 1995, p.4). Essentially, a Needs Assessment helps you understand what to do with the information you collected in the initial phases of building your RDS program, and figure out how best to tailor your Program to meet the needs of your Library and University.
The article by Matthew Benge et. al. charts an outline for how an organization can undertake a needs assessment project which could be useful to you as you begin this process on your own.
After conducting the Assessment you might learn that your library and your campus have the following needs:
- Data security and integrity
- Research tools and services
As an example, let’s say that after gaining a solid understanding of where you currently are you have identified some key goals for your RDS program such as:
- Conduct regular trainings on data carpentry
- Attend regional and national SAS conferences to learn new skills and build professional relationships
- Write a weekly “Research Data Tips and Tricks” column in the library e-newsletter
- Raise awareness of the importance of data integrity and security for all Library faculty members
Once you have these goals identified, you can start to gather information about the missing pieces that will help you accomplish those goals. Do you have the right computer software? What about access to current journals and other research materials? Are there staff or faculty members whose expertise you can draw on to create your training programs? What about travel funding, research opportunities, or even access to shared Library resources like file storage and internal databases? You may need all of this and much more, but you won’t know it until you start examining your goals and the gaps between your those goals and your current situation.
The mechanics of conducting a Needs Assessment can be as simple or as complicated as you would like. A basic spreadsheet is a good place to start, such as the example below.
| Objectives | What do we have? | What do we need? | How can we get it? | Success Criteria |
| Conduct regular trainings on data carpentry |
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| Attend regional and national SAS conferences |
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| Write a weekly “Research Data Tips and Tricks” column |
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| Raise awareness of the importance of data integrity and security for all Library faculty members |
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(Can we cut the material below this line, or move it to another chapter? It was in the original book and it’s highly academic and not specifically related to a Needs Assessment.)
As an example, let’s say that the overall goal of the needs assessment would be to determine what types of technology resources might be useful for individuals within a specific geographical area-these could be adults, children, a specific demographic, or similar. Objectives might be outlined as:
- Understand existing technology usage within this particular population
- Analyze perceived assets and barriers to accessing and utilizing technology
- Determine necessary training and support to increase technology usage within this population
Data collection could entail doing focus groups/interviews or asking them to draw their perfect scenario-information on specific data gathering methodologies is available further in this chapter. Once the data is collected, you can identify cross-cutting themes that could help inform priorities for action. The final steps would entail sharing the draft action items with these individuals and seeking an additional round of feedback using similar methods before launching a pilot initiative where additional data would be utilized to provide direction for a more fully-developed program.
Perhaps focusing on what is lacking rather than what is already available is not an ideal way to proceed. The Human Services Commission also recommends thinking about what a community already has through asset mapping. This technique: “(1) uncovers resources found in a community; (2) relies on the assets within a community at a specific time; and (3) seeks to build linkages among local people, institutions, and organizations” (Human Services Commission, 2013, p.3). Asset mapping does not necessarily involve the creation of an actual map, but rather the development of a framework of connections among individuals/groups, resources, and infrastructure that create a holistic view of where the community is starting and what it has to work with. This approach will allow for gaps to be identified more easily and works as an additive, rather than a reductive process, whereby needs translate into additional resources and support that can be added to round out the constellation of assets within a particular community. Asset mapping incorporates a similar set of steps as those for a needs assessment in terms of framing goals and capturing the assets in question by identifying existing expertise, fiscal allocations, infrastructure and tools, and/or physical resources.
Asset mapping can also pave the way for a gap analysis, which consists of measuring the current state or situation, identifying the desired state or situation, and determining what the organization needs to do in order to achieve that ideal state (Lucidchart, n.d.). In this case, embracing a new role for the library represents the future and depending on the role in question, the library is analyzing organizational culture and values, staffing, training, funding, infrastructure, and partnerships to ascertain how it will achieve that role. The Lucidchart blog (n.d.) discusses several different methods (SWOT, Fishbone, McKinsey 7S framework, Nadler-Tushman model, and PEST) that can be used to address these areas, and although they all vary to some degree or another in the type of analysis that can be undertaken, they also all share some commonalities. First, the analysis must take some inventory of its current state or assets as described above to help establish the starting point or benchmark by which future progress will be measured. Next, the ideal state is represented as the proverbial finish line with a desired outcome in mind-whether that is reflected in a new role, initiative, partnership, strategic goal or similar. The final aspect of the gap analysis would then entail being able to answer the following questions: Given the current levels of capacity, staffing, etc. which have been identified, how would the library move from one role to another and/or undertake a new role? What additional skills, resources, and partnerships would the library need in order to make that transition and how long would it take? Who would need to be involved both internally and externally? How would success be measured and what would happen if that desired state or role would not be achieved?