Identifying Communities Needs

There are a number of reasons why a community group or community development worker might want to identify a community's needs such as:

  To develop a plan for future action  

  To apply for funding and the need to prove need  

  To consider the need to set up a new project or organisation

The important issues to consider are:

 

   Inclusiveness - ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to havetheir say

 

   Accessibility - making sure that any methods you use are available to

   as many people as possible

  

   Triangulation - a technical research term which means that you have

   a number of ways of checking out that the information you have is

   right

Some of the techniques for collecting the information about community needs include:

 

Using existing information

 

Face to face surveys

 

Questionnaires

 

Focus groups

 

Events

 

Each has their own advantages and drawbacks

 

1. Using existing information

+  It can save time, energy and cost and prevents local people from experiencing research fatigue

 

-  The information you have nay not be up to date and will have been collected for another purpose so may not be relevant to your needs

 

2. Face to face surveys

 

+  Useful in terms of getting to talk to people in-depth and find out detailed information and it can be done in places where people feel comfortable

 

-  It can be costly in terms of time and finding the people to do it

3. Questionnaires

+  An easy way to get to lots of people quickly

 

-   It doesn't always get a good response rate and it requires a level of literacy, grasp of English as well as time and motivation

A better response rate has been experienced by groups where they have gone back for the form or offered help with completing it

 

4. Focus groups

 

+  These are good for getting an idea of what the issues are that you should be gathering information about before you start. They are also useful for testing out the final results to see if they reflect an accurate picture of what people think the local needs are.

 

-  You need to make sure that you have representative groups of people, or hold a number of groups so that you include young people, older people, parents, people from different background or from different parts of the neighbourhood

 

5. Events

 

+  A good way of finding out what the issues are to start with or for collecting information from people face to face

 

-  This should never be used as the sole method as it only ever includes those people who can get there or want to get there. Remember that your priorities are not everyone's priorities

Remember!

 

It is important to make it easy for people and to make it relevant - don't

blame people for not giving you the information if they can't see the point.

make it easy, make it relevant, make it interesting

Above all, make your information public - let people know what the results were and what you're going to do with it. People will be much more willing to get involved in the future if they know that something useful happened as a result of their efforts.

Adapted from Ann Hindley Techniques for identifying Communities' Needs in Community Work Skills Manual 2009 Edited by Val Harris

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