Date of Award

Spring 5-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

STEM Education & Professional Studies

Program/Concentration

Instructional Design and Technology

Committee Director

John Baaki

Committee Member

Jill Stefaniak

Committee Member

Petros Katsioloudis

Abstract

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.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/3d2t-4y57

ISBN

9798834003403

ORCID

0000-0002-8627-2650

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