Communicate with Confidence/Project Report

              * what arc the attitudes, beliefs, and values of the
participants' 1
* what do the parucipants expect from the presentation' 1
* how well do they know each o t h e r 0
* is there a fee or is it free?
Flow to do a needs assessment
A needs assessment helps you find out the needs of
your group. Collect information about the group before
or dunng your presentation. Conducting a needs
assessment beforehand helps you establish your
audience's level of understanding. You might want to do
a needs assessment during your time together to find out
how your presentation is working for the group. A needs
assessment after your presentation helps you to see how
it went for both you and your group.
Key individuals, community groups, public sources
like television, radio and newspaper, and organizational
records are good sources of information on your group.
You can tap these sources in several ways. The ideal way
to find out a group's needs is to talk to each member.
This would give you the most accurate information to
focus on the needs of each participant. But in most cases
this isn't possible. Let's look at some alternate ways to
collect information:
Interviewing key individuals
- talking in person or by telephone to some
participants, co- ordinators, community leaders, and
executives.
Group interview
- talking with a group of three to six participants: may
also include conference calls
Questionnaire
- mailing out questions to a sample of the group or to
the enure group
Brainstorming
- verbalising as many needs or new program ideas
within a given period of time; the grfeup then evaluates
the ideas and picks the most important ones
Focus group
- choosing a select group of eight to twelve individuals
from different populations, meeting with a moderator to
discuss and give feedback on specific subjects.
Observations
- watching what's going on with participants and the
community they live in.
Evaluations
- assessing earlier presentations' the success and/ or
failure of a presentation provides important information.
This information tells von
Analyse the informauon you've collected to determine
the group's needs. You need to review, classify,
interpret, and evaluate the information. Look for gaps
between " what is", and " what ought to be". The size of
the gap will determine the importance of the need. Look
for gaps by:
* using scales from one to five, for example, one being
poor and five being excellent, that show how
participants feel about information in your presentation
* having participants tell you how important a skill,
attitude or need is relative to their skills attitudes and
needs
* asking the group to reach consensus on an issue, or
rank its importance or state group needs.
Once you have done this you can decide what
activities will best sansfy the participants' needs.
Common pit falls in deciding
participant needs
You can sidestep pitfalls when you conduct a needs
assessment.
Avoid
* hearing only what you want to hear
* using only one information- collecting technique to
determine your group's needs; use several
methods to get the best representative sample
* identifying and deciding on the presentation's content
by yourself; several people [ participants, the
sponsoring agency, key community members]
should have a say in deciding the group's
needs and the content of your presentation.
* making hasty decisions on group needs because you're
out of time
Summary
Tap several sources for information about the needs of
your group. Collect information using different methods.
Analyze what information you have come up with,
locate the gap.
It's up to you to initiate the needs assessment, but other
individuals like specialists, sponsoring agencies and
group leaders share the responsibility. Your presentation
will be a hit if you care enough to find out your group" s
needs.