Social Work

Each student will prepare a proposal or plan for the needs assessment. Papers are expected to be 5-6 pages in length, excluding the title page, references (minimum of 8 references), and any appendices (optional). Papers under the page limit or exceeding the page limit are subject to an automatic deduction of 10% of the final grade for the assignment.  Do not collect data until your proposal has been approved by your group instructor.

The proposal should respond to the following questions in the order that follows (you are encouraged to include the main headings within your paper):

a. Primary Issue of the Needs Assessment (refer to Netting et al. (2017) chapters 3 & 4)

1. Define the issue.
2. Why is this issue important to social work?  What population is primarily affected by the issue? How is this population affected?
3. Who else is interested in the problem? Who are the stakeholders? What efforts are currently being made to address the issue

Include literature addressing previous findings, theoretical assumptions, statistics detailing prevalence and impact of the issue, etc.

b. Needs Assessment Plan

1. 1. Data collection procedures are limited to interviews.  Will you conduct interviews over the phone, via video chat, in person etc.? Please describe your interview plan.
      • Include a draft of the list of questions you will use to collect data. (ideally each interview will consist of 8-12 questions)
      • In addition to the original questions you generate, all students will include the following questions:
        1. What are challenges experienced by [population]?
        2. What are the strengths of this group?
        3. You provide a number of services such as X and Y, are there any additional services this population needs?
        4. Include one/two questions that will help build rapport at the beginning of the interview
        5. Include a few demographic questions (e.g., gender, length of employment at agency, role/title of interviewee, educational background).
   2. Each student should include 3-5 potential interview sites.
      • Include a brief description of each agency, and indicate why you believe the agency is a good match.
   3. Potential contributions of the needs assessment.
      • What do you think you will gain from this process?
      • What can the agencies you interview and other agencies working on this issue gain from this process?
   4. Include a work plan that details what you plan to do (list of tasks), and by when (set deadlines).  A table format is suggested. Complete table and include detailed narrative to explain the steps included in the table in the paper.
   5. Include a plan to share the findings with interview sites.

c. Write an abstract for the proposal.  In the abstract summarize the purpose of the needs assessment, brief overview of the literature review, and include sample questions (not the ones everyone will use). Briefly describe your plan for sharing results with interview sites. Include the abstract as part of your paper and also post to discussion board for other classmates to review and provide feedback.