This thoroughly revised edition of the best-selling book Conducting Needs Assessment offers a brief, how-to guide that demystifies the process of planning a community intervention by helping both students and practitioners understand how to plan and conduct a needs assessment.

"In order for training to be effective, it has to be based on the needs of both the organization and its employees. This book gives trainers the information and step-by-step instructions they need to determine the training requirements of everyone from newly hired, recently promoted, or just-transferred employees, to those who need training as a result of changes in operations, technology, or systems in the company.

In today's rapidly changing world, new social and human service problems emerge constantly, and in order to make good use of resources that are often limited, social service agencies must ensure that their services are truly needed. Needs assessments provide a baseline against which later results can be compared, and may also assist policy-makers in recognizing new trends or problems on the horizon.

Explore multiple practical and theoretical dimensions of needs assessment. This volume focuses exclusively on this essential topic for guiding decisions-examining subjects such as: the importance of defining needs, implementing assessments in public and private-sector organizations, aligning needs with assets and capacity assessments, how assessments factor into meaningful change at the organizational and society levels how to apply needs assessments in culturally diverse contexts conducting international needs assessments, and the impact of technologies on needs assessment methods.