Needs Analysis

Needs Analysis 

Written by Ari Julianto




Needs analysis (also known as needs assessment) has a vital role in the process of designing and carrying out any language course, whether it be English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or general English course, and its centrality has been acknowledged by several scholars and authors.

I. Definition
The word of ‘need’ is similar to ‘necessity, exigency, requisite’. These nouns denote a condition in which something essential is required or wanted; they also refer to that which is required or wanted. Based on Editorial Team (1992), the word ‘need’ is defines as (1) A lack of something required or desirable (2) Something required or wanted; a requisite (3) Necessity; obligation (4) A condition of poverty or misfortune.

A needs analysis, write Watkins and Kaufman (1996), identifies the causes of the gaps in results so that appropriate methods, means, tactics, tools, and approaches may be rationally identified and then selected for meeting the needs. It is thus carried out following a needs assessment.

Along with this, Richards and Schmidt (2002: 353) define the word of ‘needs’ bring to analysis which is also called needs assessment (in language teaching and language programme design) the process of determining the needs for which a learner or group of learners requires a language and arranging the needs according to priorities.

II. Direct and Indirect Need Assessment
McCawley (2004) describes that there are two types of needs assessment:
1. Direct Needs Assessment
A direct needs assessment is accomplished through formal research that gathers data from clientele. An indirect approach uses secondary data or asks surrogates (advisors) for their opinions about priority needs and issues. The direct assessment will result in data that is more specific to the needs of individuals, and it can be quantitative in terms of probability and confidence.However, direct research requires considerably more resources to design and also requires institutional approval to conduct. Direct assessment should be conducted periodically for major program efforts.

2. Indirect Needs Assessment
An indirect needs assessment can be conducted at any time when an advisory committee is meeting and does not require the same level of investment in the design, implementation, and analysis. However, even for a nonformal assessment, if the results are to be credible, procedures must be followed, and findings must be carefully documented.

III. Philosophies of Needs Analysis
According to Stufflebeam as cited in Brown (1995), four divergent philosophies can arise in a needs analysis:
(1) the democratic
The democratic philosophy is one in which a need is defined as any change that is desired by a majority of the group involved. Whether this group consisted of the students themselves, their teachers, program administrators, or the owners of a private school, the democratic philosophy would lead to a needs analysis that would gather information about the learning most desired by the chosen groups (Brown, 1995).

(2) the analytic
The analytic philosophy is whatever the students will naturally learn next based on what is known about them and the learning processes involved: that is the students are at stage X in their language development, and they next need to learn X+1 or whatever is next in the hierarchy of language development.

(3) the diagnostic
A diagnostic philosophy proposes that a need is anything that would prove harmful if it was missing (Brown,1995).

(4) the discrepancy
the discrepancy philosophy which constitutes the base of this study, is one in which needs are viewed as differences or discrepancies, between a desired performance from the students and what they are actually doing. The discrepancy or gap model is the most straightforward and widely used, especially in education (McKillip,1987). The model emphasizes normative expectations and involves three phases:
(1) goal setting, identifying what ought to be;
(2) performance measurement, determining what is;
(3) discrepancy identification, ordering differences between what ought to be and what is” (McKillip,1987).

McCawley (2004) describes that a needs assessment, thoughtfully performed, provides the following:
1.Impact. Insights about how education and training can impact your audience;
2. Approaches. Knowledge about educational approaches that may be most effective;
3. Awareness of existing programs and of gaps in available training to enable efficient use of resources;
4. Outcomes. Information about the current situation that can be used to document outcomes;
5. Demand. Knowledge about the potential demand for future programs and products;
6. Credibility that the program is serving the target audience,
an important part of communicating greater competence and professionalism to funding authorities who want to know a program or product’s impact.

IV. A Needs Assessment Plan
Kaufman (1986) stresses that a needs assessment plan is a blueprint for collecting information about instructional needs. By its very nature, a needs assessment plan assumes that sufficient justification already exists to solve a human performance problem.

According to Silber and Westgaard (1986), a needs assessment plan should address seven key issues:
1. Objectives.
What results are desired from the needs assessment?
2. Target audience.
Whose needs will be assessed?
3. Sampling procedures.
What methods will be used to select a representative group of people from the target audience for participation in the needs assessment?
4. Data collection methods.
How will information about needs be gathered?
5. Specifications/or instruments and protocols.
What instruments should be used during needs assessment, and how should they be used? What approvals or protocols are necessary for conducting the needs assessment, and how will the instructional designer interact with members of the organization?
6. Methods of data analysis.
How will the information collected during needs assessment be analyzed?
7. Descriptions of how decisions will be made based on the data.
How will needs be identified from the results of data collection and analysis?

However, case studies of needs assessment consistently show that such issues are given varying degrees of emphasis, depending on project constraints and stakeholder expectations as Phillips and Holton (1995) state.

V. The Purpose
Richards (2001) states that needs assesment in language teaching can be used for a number of different purposes, for example:
1. “To find out what language skills a learner needs in order to perform a particular role, such as sales manager, tour guide or university student
2. To help determine if an existing course adequately addresses the needs of potential students
3· To determine which students from a group are most in need of training in particular language skills
4· To identify a change of direction that people in a reference group feel is important
5· To identify a gap between what students are able to do and what  they need to be able to do
6· To collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing”

VI. Steps in Needs Assessment
There are certain kinds of models with different steps suggested for needs assessment. To begin with, steps in needs assessment are stated  as the following by McKillip (1987):
1. Identify users and the uses of the needs assessment
2. Describe the target population and the service environment
3. Identify needs
       - Describe problems
       - Describe solutions
4. Assess the importance of the needs
5. Communicate results

Richards (2001) suggests that decisions on the practical procedures involved in collecting, organizing, analyzing and reporting the information collected be made. He states that there needs to be a clear reason for collecting different kinds of information and so as to ensure that only information that will actually be used is collected.

Richards (2001) state the following procedures which have been used in investigating the language needs of non-English-background students at New Zealand University:
1. literature survey
2. analysis of wide range of survey questionnaires
3. contact with others who had conducted similar surveys
4. interviews with teachers to determine goals
5. identification of participating departments
6. presentation of project proposal to participating departments and identification of liaison person in each department
7. development of a pilot student and staff questionnaire
8. review of the questionnaires by colleagues
9. piloting of the questionnaires
10. selection of staff and student subjects
11. developing a schedule for collecting data
12. administration of questionnaires
13. follow-up interviews with selected participants
14. tabulation of responses
15. analysis of responses
16. writing up of report and recommendations

The above mentioned procedures apply to this particular study except the one suggesting follow-up interviews with selected participants.

McCawley (2004) describes that seven components of a needs assessment plan include:
1. Write objectives:
What is it that you want to learn from the needs assessment?
2. Select audience:
Who is the target audience? Whose needs are you measuring, and to whom will you give the required information?
3. Collect data:
How will you collect data that will tell you what you need to know? Will you collect datadirectly from the target audience or indirectly?
4. Select audience sample:
How will you select a sample of  espondents who represent the target audience?
5. Pick an instrument:
What instruments and techniques will you use to collect data?
6. Analyze data:
How will you analyze the data you collect?


Reference
Brown, J.D.1995. The elements of Language Curriculum. Boston:Heinle and Heinle.

Editorial Team. 1992. The American Heritage Dictionary of The English Language. Third Edition. Boston: Houghton Miffin.

McCawley, Paul F. 2004. Methods for Conducting an Educational Needs Assessment Guidelines for Cooperative Extension System Professionals.  BUL 870. University of Idaho Extension.

McKillip, J. 198). Need analysis: Tools for the services and education.California: Sage Publications, Inc.

Richards, J.C.2001. Curriculum Development in Language Teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Richards, Jack C. and Richard Schmidt. 2002. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. London. Pearson Education Limited.

Stufflebeam, D.L., McCormick, C.H., Brinkerhoff, R.O., Nelson, D.D.1985.Conducting educational needs assessments. Boston: Klower.

Watkins, R, & Kaufman, R .1996.An Update on Relating Needs Assessment and Needs Analysis. Performance Improvement, 35(10), 10-13. Retrieved November 17,2008, from http://www3.interscience.wiley.comljournaI/114120827/abstract.