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Conduct a Community Needs Assessment

A step-by-step guide

This toolkit helps institutions understand why they should lead a community needs assessment and what steps they should take to manage one.

While community needs assessments (CNAs) are not a new method to determine what resources a region or population requires, they are an increasingly common activity for higher education institutions to perform. To support partners, EAB has built out a comprehensive suite of resources on CNAs. We recommend starting with this overview guide before turning to the planning tool and case studies.

Download the Planning Guide

  • “”

    Accessibility

    Who can receive this organization’s services?

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    Availability

    Does the organization have the capacity to assist in the CNA process?

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    Quality

    How effective is the available programming?

  • “”

    Quantity

    How many programs are offered?

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    Legitimacy

    Does the community believe in the organization and its services?

3. Create a data collection plan

Once the team is organized, it can identify existing data and research on the topic, population group, and region to understand the status quo and create a data wish list. Reviewing relevant existing data helps the team determine gaps in analysis, identify any additional populations or concerns to consider, and decide what additional data needs to be collected.

The Census Bureau or state-provided data resources have extensive publicly available data sets. Other reliable external data sources can come from the Chamber of Commerce, civic organizations, faith-based groups, the health department or health care providers, non-profit organizations, and the public school system.

Community needs assessments typically use a mixed-methods approach, with quantitative data from external government data sites that captures demographic information and qualitative data from surveys, interviews, and public forums that capture narrative themes and nuanced information. Learn more about data collection for CNAs.

Types of data to collect for a community needs assessment
  • Existing community resources
  • Interviews
  • Surveys
  • Public forums
  • Focus groups

After data needs and collection methods are confirmed, the team can select data collection sites. In addition to online distribution of surveys and interview requests, consider in-person collection sites at a mix of urban and rural locations if applicable, and ensure that sites provide access for all types of populations. Teams should consider locating sites at community organizations to reach underrepresented or underserved populations.

4. Secure funding

CNAs can be funded by the institution, external partners, government grants, or the community.

Case studies

5. Determine timeline

The timeline to conduct a CNA is highly dependent on the parameters, objectives, and funding. CNAs conducted at institutions typically take between three months for narrowly scoped assessments to two years for more expansive ones.

  • 3 months: Planning
  • 6 months: Data collection
  • 9 months: Data analysis
  • 12 months: Action planning

Case studies

  • Brandeis University took six months to conduct a CNA on the needs of the Ugandan immigrant population in Waltham, MA.
  • Kent State University will take two years to explore and understand the needs of the LGBTQ+ community in Akron, OH.

Step 2: Conduct assessment

Most organizations incorporate a combination of quantitative and qualitative data sources when conducting a CNA. Below are the most common data collection techniques.

Inventory community resources and map community assets

Develop a community profile that outlines the current demographics, economic data, and services provided in the region. Resources can include health care providers, domestic violence shelters, food assistance programs, housing resources, counseling services, and more.

Learn More About Asset Mapping

Conduct surveys

Concerns surveys allow community members to identify the most pressing issues or problems facing their community. These types of surveys can help inform later interview questions and action planning. Other types of surveys can focus on gathering demographic information or beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors exhibited by community members.

Interview key informants

Interviews can provide in-depth perspectives on population- or topic-specific issues and enhance data collected through secondary resources and surveys. Contact key informants, who can range from community leaders, residents, or experts on a particular topic, to provide qualitative intelligence.

Learn More About Interviewing Key Informants

Host listening sessions and focus groups

Focus groups and listening sessions can add a nuanced narrative to survey data collected throughout the CNA process. Consider segmenting focus groups by topic or population to analyze patterns across groups.

Learn More About Focus Groups

Step 3: Analyze data

Disaggregate quantitative data

Disaggregated data can reveal important inequities and differences between subcategories that are not apparent when analyzing an entire dataset. Commonly used categories include gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, immigrant status, sexual orientation, and insurance status. By disaggregating data, institutional leaders can develop targeted programming to best address specific community needs. However, disaggregated data may not be useful for tightly scoped community needs assessment, as it is more difficult to determine trends and protect individual privacy when populations are small.

Evaluate and organize qualitative responses

For qualitative data, it is best practice to develop a rating scale so that there is consistency across analysis.

Step 4: Develop action plan

The final step is to develop an action plan to provide recommendations or guide program development. This is the most valuable component of the CNA, as it brings the qualitative and quantitative insights to life. However, many needs assessments fail to integrate action planning and accountability mechanisms into their process which limits their impact in the community. Institutions must plan to collect feedback from the community and incorporate these responses into further recommendations or changes in their assessment reports.

Even though your institution may lead the CNA process, you may need to incorporate multiple stakeholders in the action planning. Depending on the issue, it can be more effective for the university to partner with a community organization or government agency to determine strategy and implement action steps.

Develop community profile

The first stage of developing an action plan is to develop a community profile. A community profile provides a baseline summary of the strengths, resources, and gaps within a community. The community profile should include secondary data collected about relevant demographics, information on existing community organizations, and primary data collected throughout the community needs assessment process.

See an Example of a Community Profile

Community profiles can include information on:

  • Demographic characteristics (e.g., average household income, age distribution, concentrations of special groups)
  • Economic data (e.g., unemployment rates and trends, major employers and industries)
  • Housing data (e.g., concentration of renters versus owners, availability of low-income housing)
  • Transportation data (e.g., transit development plans, bike paths)
  • Community buildings, resources, and services (e.g., hospitals, schools, churches, community centers)
  • Any other notable or unique features of the community (e.g., historical aspects)

Create reports and present feedback

The next step is to disseminate the findings from the CNA to the community as a written report or at a public meeting. The report should include the purpose of the community needs assessment, the stakeholders involved, a summary of the data collection process, and an analysis of the findings.

Institutions can solicit feedback through townhalls, email distribution, or university-community working groups. Participants should rank top issues to help ensure community support for the prioritized needs. Additionally, through university-community working groups, institutions must ask participants two questions:

  1. What is the community’s perception of the issue?
  2. What role does the community believe the university should play in the process of improving this issue?

Prioritize need and relevant action steps

After the community provides feedback on the findings, the team must determine a process to prioritize needs. In addition to soliciting community input, the team must consider institutional or organizational capacity to address the need, previous and existing attempts to address the topic, and any social, political, racial, or socioeconomic factors that affect this issue.

Learn How to Prioritize and Rank Needs

Consider developing a prioritization matrix or scoring rubric that allows institutional leaders, community organizations, and any other participants to gather perceived rankings and inform action steps. A low feasibility but high impact program could be free, accessible health care for all residents in a city. A high feasibility but low impact program could be a food drive for residents with diabetes who live in a small neighborhood.

Other options to prioritize community needs include:

  • Team consensus: all members of the group agree to support a decision for a common goal
  • Nominal group process: team members give feedback on each topic area and individually vote on their top priorities
  • Force field analysis: members of the group identify the forces that would support and undermine change
  • Paired comparison technique: group members compare areas of need in pairs to determine which is the highest priority
  • Interrelationship diagram: team members analyze cause-and-effect relationships in complex situations to determine what areas of need are most effectively addressed by further action planning

Lastly, colleges and universities must create an action plan for each prioritized need. Develop benchmarks, identify metrics to measure, determine strategies for action, and outline expected results to define success. Ensure action plans allow time for periodic reflection and assessment of objectives, metrics, and action steps to ensure the plan can adapt as change.

Download the Planning Guide

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