Needs Assessment for Program Planning in Vocational Education. Information Series No. 154.

Intended to assist practitioners in vocational education in improving program planning and evaluation, this paper provides an overview of needs assessment, which is a method of acquiring evaluative data required by the Vocational Education Amendments of 1978 (P.L. 94-482). The first two sections discuss various definitions of educational needs currently used and the six types of needs assessment methods commonly applied: self-perceived needs discrepancy analysis, interactive needs assessment, objective discrepancy analysis, subjective needs assessment, objective needs assessment, and subjective discrepancy analysis. The last two of these types are further illustrated in the third section as their use in national, state, and local studies is described. (The national study was conducted in large cities, while the other studies were made in Iowa, Tennessee, Florida, and Minnesota.) Then, the state of the art of needs assessment in vocational education is examined. The last section delineates significant issues and problems, including (1) the definition of the term "need"; (2) performance and treatment needs; (3) levels of intensity of educational needs; (4) the combination of hard and soft data; and (5) continuous needs assessment. The appendix contains a list of suggested readings. (This paper is one of a series of sixteen knowledge transformation papers.) (ELG)