, 2009; online edn, Oxford Academic , 1 May 2009 ), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:royes/9780195368789.003.0005, accessed 12 Sept. 2024.
Navbar Search Filter Mobile Enter search term Search Navbar Search Filter Enter search term SearchThis chapter provides helpful suggestions for writing the needs assessment report and executive summary, which will assist the consideration for the stakeholders and other important persons who are in a position to use the findings to achieve the kind of changes needed for creating new services, modifying existing services, or reordering budgetary priorities. Component parts of the final report may include: the introduction, the methodology, the findings, recommendations, and the limitations.
Collection: Oxford Scholarship OnlineThis chapter will provide helpful suggestions for writing the needs assessment report and executive summary and will assist the reader in thinking about the stakeholders and other important persons who are in a position to use the findings to achieve the kind of changes needed for new services or to re‐order budgetary priorities.
Before starting to write the first paragraph of the needs assessment report, it is important to remember the audience for whom the report is being written. Need assessment reports do not usually follow the academic style that you might use in writing for a college professor. Writing term papers or other academic writing usually involves the inclusion of multiple scholarly sources (e.g., a review of the literature) and may include a theoretical orientation or discussion of various theoretical perspectives. However, most need assessment reports are not written for professors, but for a nonacademic lay‐reader. Because the needs assessment will be very specific to an agency, community, or problem in a given geographical region, it may not be necessary to review literature from scholarly sources; indeed, literature may not even exist or be specific enough to be relevant. Knowing the group for whom you are writing the report will help you adjust your writing style “up” to a more formal or scholarly style or “down” depending on the sophistication of those who will be reading your report.
Generally speaking, the writing should be aimed at the “average” reader—someone who has a high school degree. Most word processing programs have the ability to provide an estimate of the document's readability. If the readability index is at 12 or 13, then try to use shorter words and sentences to reduce it to 9, 10, or 11. Compound, complex sentences will increase the readability index. You should also avoid highly technical terms, jargon, and acronyms (e.g., SPSS) that might be unfamiliar to some of the audience.
Writing short sentences and composing short paragraphs (as opposed to those that stretch over a whole page) will assist in making the report more “reader‐friendly” and easier to understand. Make the document easy to understand. Do not assume that the reader knows everything that you do. On the contrary, it is best to imagine that the reader has no knowledge of your project and to start from the very beginning and bring them along. Because you have been involved with the needs assessment project, you have an “insider's knowledge” that others will not have. If you are not careful, important details can be overlooked because you may forget that not everyone knows what you have learned. If you are on the needs assessment planning team, one way to avoid this problem is to keep a log or journal that records important decisions that were made and possibly the rationale for them. For example, the committee might decide to mail questionnaires not to former clients but only to current clients because of a limited budget. Because you were there and benefited from the discussion, it might not occur to you to explain in the report why clients with closed cases were excluded from the data collection.
At the same time, the needs assessment report should not contain superfluous information or present too many details that do not assist readers in understanding the project or its findings. It would not be necessary to note every decision, to list every fact, or to inundate the reader with all of the statistical tests of significance that were conducted. Instead, keep in mind that most readers are not interested in long reports—especially those where the information they are most interested in reading about is difficult to find or buried deep in pointless trivia about the project's findings.
In academic writing, passive voice is often expected (e.g., “five focus groups were created”); however, writing in active voice (e.g., “the planning team interviewed eight agency supervisors”) often makes for more interesting reading and helps to personalize the report. If you want your report to be read by many people in the agency or community, then it might be best to choose the active voice over the passive. This should be a topic discussed by the planning committee as should deciding who ought to receive copies of the report.
Need assessment reports contain four distinct components, which will each be discussed in turn.
All needs assessments should start by describing the problem that has given rise to the needs assessment project. Sometimes it is helpful to provide your readers with some statistics so that the problem can be considered in context. For example, in Crockett County the annual incidence of cervical cancer might be 16.2 cases per 100,000 population, whereas the national rate is 7.9 cases per 100,000—clearly, a problem worthy of attention.
Be sure to explain the purpose for the needs assessment. Sometimes this is expressed as a goal, objective, or rationale. If the needs assessment has come about because of some local tragedy (e.g., a teen suicide), then it would be okay to inform readers about that case or story. Remember that those reading your report may not be familiar with the impetus or motivation for the needs assessment as you. When they have finished reading this section, they should have a good idea about the problem or issue, the rationale for studying it, and what you hope to learn from the needs assessment.
As we learned earlier, the methodology of a needs assessment refers to the what, how, and when of the data collection process. In other words, you will need to explain what procedures you used, how your participants were recruited into the project, what questions were asked of them and so forth. Normally, you would identify the instruments that you used to collect data and you might want to provide a brief description of them or cite a reference where readers could find additional information if desired. Here you would also discuss how many questionnaires were distributed, the number of surveys returned, and that sort of thing. Enough information should be provided that the reader can understand the data collection strategy and its rigor.
The reader of this section of your report will be interested in whom you contacted and how you collected your data. Did you mail out questionnaires to staff? To clients? Distribute them to passers‐by at the mall? Conduct focus groups with prospective clients? Interview key informants in the community? You owe it to your readers to explain how many persons were contacted or involved, the response or return rates on your surveys, and/or estimates of those who chose not to participate. If your data collection design was scientifically constructed (e.g., you did a random selection, probability sample with a margin of error and level of confidence), then briefly explain your random selection procedure. Append a copy of your questionnaire or interview schedule at the end of the needs assessment report. If you have borrowed a questionnaire or data collection instrument used in some other study, then inform the reader about that. If your needs assessment planning team created the data collection instrument, then you might want to inform the reader about that process—who had input and who reviewed or critiqued the instrument.
Even if your design is more inferential and less scientific, readers of your report will want to know how you chose to interview or question the respondents whom you asked to participate. The sample is a representation of those in the larger population (all of those who potentially might have been contacted), and readers will expect to know how these “representatives” were chosen to speak about their or the program's needs.
Also of interest will be who collected the data (e.g, external contractor or agency staff) and their relationship to the agency as well as how much involvement the needs assessment investigator or team had with those supplying the information. For example, was the interview a 15‐minute interview? Did the focus groups last 2 hours on average? Were the surveys anonymous? Did the majority of the staff participate?
If your needs assessment will involve a sophisticated data analysis or at least more than reporting percentages, then you may want to briefly describe your data analytic plan either at the end of the methodology section or the beginning of the findings section.
The main reason for reading the needs assessment report is to learn what the needs assessment team discovered. You may want to give this section considerable thought in terms of how you organize your findings. For example, you might want to discuss what you think is the most important finding first, and then the second most, and so on. Or, you might organize the findings by some kind of topical arrangement—those relevant to children under the age of 18 years, adults, older adults, and so forth.
In a large community, the findings could be organized by neighborhood or topical problem (e.g., crime, garbage collection, schools, etc.). The presentation of the findings is directly related to the purpose of the needs assessment and what you hope to accomplish with your report. Before you actually start the writing of this section you may wish to take a blank sheet of paper, write the purpose of the needs assessment on the top of it, and then begin to list your findings that most directly relate.
The results or findings section of your report should summarize what you have learned from the data. In some ways, your task with this section is not unlike that of the prospector looking for gold. You don't need to inform the reader about every rock or pebble that you come across. In other words, it is not necessary to inform the reader of every small fact that you might have uncovered (e.g., there are three more 90‐year‐olds living in zip code 40019 than in zip code 40017). If you have a lot of numerical data, then presenting the data in easy‐to‐comprehend tables is usually a good strategy. The rule here is that “less is more.” In other words, instead of preparing 35 full‐page tables of tabular data, you will have more people read your report if you prepare, say, no more than five or six tables. Similarly, you will have more readers of your tables if you don't cram too much information into each one, making them overly complex and difficult to comprehend. Although the natural tendency is to want to inform the reader about everything, remember that each reader's time is valuable and that most don't want to spend all afternoon delving into some fine point of data analysis. Show your readers what is important by what you present in your tables. Tell your reader about your key findings in your written narrative.
If the story does not seem to flow easily, then it may be that you are looking at the numbers (e.g., 233 men and 187 women) instead of the percentages or the proportions of clients or respondents who are stating a preference or identifying a problem. Often the numbers of men and women may not be comparable. It is not possible to obtain men and women in exactly the same number. Proportion is important. For example, if 75% of the male respondents and 90% of females say that there are too many gun‐related crimes in the community, that is a pretty powerful statement that should be discussed. Proportions communicate beautifully and sometimes more powerfully than more sophisticated analyses.
Another approach you might be able to use in telling the story is to see if there are comparable statistics (benchmarks) from national, state, or other local organizations. It could be that compared to the national average, the problem in your community is three times greater. Or perhaps people in the adjoining county recognize the problem in approximately the same proportion. Similar findings as produced by the benchmarks serve to give readers (and you!) some assurance that your findings are not a wild or random fluke.
When you finish your first draft of the findings section, go back over it to see if there is too much repetition. For example, you may not always need to use tables to present data that can be easily explained in the narrative section. To take an example, citizens of Twowheel City may feel that lack of bicycle lanes is the number one problem in their community. It may not be necessary to create tables to show the number of people who endorsed that notion by gender, census tract, age group, and ethnic group. On the other hand, your analysis of the data might show that young adults (ages 19–39 years) spoke to that problem exclusively, whereas other age groups identified different problems and with far less agreement. You may have found that persons ages 40 to 60 years felt that the greatest community need was for a recreational center for teenagers, and that adults age 61 years and older wanted more retail shopping options downtown. Sometimes it is important to use a table to show that certain needs cluster more in one group than in another.
If you involve hypothesis testing (e.g., t‐tests, chi‐squares, etc.), keep in mind that showing the average reader of your report the statistical results (e.g., X 2 [6, n = 997] = 4.39; p = 0.61) will perplex and confuse many. It is better to state that “a significant difference” was found or that “no significant differences” were found with regard to your analysis and let it go at that. If you feel that it is necessary to report out the statistical information, another option would be to insert this information in an appendix at the end of the report.
Early in the planning process, a decision will have to be made in the writing of the needs assessment report regarding whether the report will present the findings objectively and factually and allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions or whether the document will state a set of conclusions or recommendations that should be implemented. If your needs assessment planning committee is also part of an advocacy group, then the decision to conclude the report with a series of recommendations may be a natural and logical way to end.
One cautionary note is that you should be careful to not let your exuberance or strong sense of advocacy interfere with your objective judgment when writing conclusions or recommendations. Don't hang a major recommendation on a weak piece of data (e.g., one client said, “The receptionist never answers the telephone.”). In scholarly writing, sometimes this problem is discussed as “overgeneralizing.” If you are going to draw a conclusion or make an important recommendation, then base it on sound data reasonably gathered with integrity. Do not “cherry‐pick” the data items that support your position and ignore or overlook the items that do not. If three of five items do not support your advocacy stance and only two do, it would be unfair and unprofessional to focus only on the two. It would be better to share with the reader that the results were “mixed” or not definitive.
Some social scientists feel that the data “should speak for itself” and that the investigator's role is simply to gather the best data that can be acquired in that situation and not to make policy or program decisions. This stance is because researchers know that one's own values and beliefs can influence how data are interpreted and even how questions are framed. For some researchers, the citizens living in a community or service providers, or both, are in a better position to know what needs to change in terms of local programming and policies.
It would make perfect sense to clarify with your boss, the sponsor of the needs assessment, or others critically involved in the planning of the needs assessment before you begin collecting data as to the expectations regarding the final report. You might even wish to create a memo, letter, or some other document that precisely states the goals, objectives, or purpose of the needs assessment, the time frame, the resources available, the length of the final report (ballpark estimate), and whether or not conclusions/recommendations should be drafted. You might even want to draft an outline of the proposed sections in the report to avoid possible misunderstanding later. (If you are conducting the needs assessment as a hired consultant, then the memo would also be a good place to document the fee that you will be paid.)
Finally, if you (or the needs assessment planning team) are uncomfortable making recommendations or drawing major conclusions from the data, then another alternative would be to frame decisions and choices that are available to the agency directors, governing board, and so forth. Agencies may become defensive if the needs assessment findings are negative—for example, if staff are not adhering to stated agency policy or if their efforts are viewed by clients as ineffectual. Sometimes these issues can be defused by preparing a draft of the findings and giving persons in power (e.g., the agency director) a preview of these prior to “finalizing” the report. Trusted staff and others in the agency can also provide useful feedback and may be able to suggest a way to present results more diplomatically than originally drafted.
Every research effort is somewhat imperfect and therefore bounded by its limitations. In other words, no study is completely free of bias, and most have experienced some problems—either major or minor—in the data collection. When the needs assessment has been poorly conceptualized (e.g, a single focus group of six teenagers is used to represent all of Chicago), the writer or writers of the needs assessment report should be aware that the needs assessment has a major limitation and consequently be very conservative and cautious when discussing the findings. On the other hand, when the needs assessment effort has been well‐planned and ‐executed, then one can have much more confidence about the findings and should be less concerned with minor limitations. The study would also have a major limitation if a survey questionnaire was mailed to many potential respondents but experienced a minuscule response rate (e.g., mailed to 1,000 potential respondents but only 57 responded). There are many ways that a study can be flawed; any violation of good research procedures would constitute a limitation (e.g., discovering after the data had been obtained that the questionnaire was biased—see the example).
What is a minor limitation? It is a flaw or error, not easily corrected or detected later, that probably would not change the results. For example, after constructing a sample frame of clients who visited the agency in 2008, randomly selecting their names, and mailing out to 650 different persons, the investigator learned that clients who entered the agency between May 1 and May 15 had not been added to the database because of the program assistant being on vacation and no one entering the data during her absence. There is no reason to suspect that the loss of clients from the survey during that 2‐week period would significantly alter the findings of the needs assessment. By contrast, there could be seasonal variations in client flow. Program staff serving children with mental health issues might find that clients admitted during the summer months presented with more severe problems than clients admitted during the school year. In that situation, the loss of 2 or 3 weeks of client data (using the example of a secretary on vacation) could become a major limitation if the random sample is much less likely to represent clients with severe problems.