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About the Center > Needs Assessment > An Essential Foundation of CHESS

An Essential Foundation of CHESS

Needs assessment allows us to identify issues faced by patients, families, health care providers and payers regarding a particular health crisis, and ultimately helps CHESS developers focus on the unmet needs of the end-users (patients and their families). It ensures that the end product is relevant to those who use it and that it helps resolve some of the frustrations, problems, uncertainties and fears of patients.

Critical Incident Technique

The Critical Incident Technique (Flanagan, 1954) that we apply in assessing needs brings to light significant incidents in a defined situation that form the basis for understanding certain behaviors, expectations and needs.

The process assumes that neither the developers of CHESS nor the potential users really understand their needs. Instead of asking what is needed, people (patients, families, providers, payers of health care) think back to key events in the care process and tell stories of events that stand out in their minds. These stories form the basis for detecting their needs.

Needs assessment begins by identifying the needs but is completed when we measure the importance of those needs and understand how well the needs are being met by current services.

The needs assessment is important for four reasons:

  1. Every item (even the least important) on the survey becomes a focus of some element of the new CHESS program.
  2. Statistical analysis of the data helps us cluster the needs into the theme areas around which CHESS material is organized.
  3. The more important the needs, the more attention they receive in CHESS. Our current needs assessment process asks two questions: how important is the need and how satisfied are you with the services? Those items that are very important and poorly satisfied receive most attention in CHESS. An item of low overall importance may have one question and answer associated with it. A very important item may have 10 questions and answers, three library articles, one decision aid, etc.
  4. The survey results form the basis for evaluations that we conduct of CHESS because CHESS should make a difference for those needs where the gap is greatest between importance and satisfaction.

Reference

  • Flanagan JC. The Critical Incident Technique. Psychological Bulletin. 1954; 327-358

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