Factors Promoting and Inhibiting the Practice of Needs Assessment by Human Performance Practitioners

Needs assessment is an essential activity for human performance improvement practitioners. This qualitative study employed the critical incident technique to determine factors, encountered by practitioners during needs assessment, which promote or inhibit successful needs assessment by exploring practitioners work across 50 incidents. Using extreme cases representing practitioners’ most and least successful needs assessment experiences allowed participants to recall rich detail of their process and the context in which they were working. Participants were also asked to reflect on what criteria they used to select most and least successful examples. From that basis, the study explored three research questions and associated themes. This study has practical implications for practitioners, providing support for needs assessment as a relationship-based and highly contextual practice. The study also highlights the structure and benefits of an iterative approach to needs assessment. Finally, the study proposes a five-level continuum on which practitioners judge the relative success of their needs assessment efforts