Lesson 4

COMMUNITY NEEDS ASSESSMENT

Overview
This chapter presents the concept of community and the community needs
assessment. It primarily focuses on conducting a community needs assessment
necessary for determining areas for improvement, solving problems, and developing
goals.

Knowing the Community

Community is simply defined as people with common interests living together in
the same place. This term is derived from the old French word comunité and the Latin
term communitas which are broad terminologies for fellowship, commonness
unstructured society, or organized society.
The most common and simplest definition of community is that it is a aggregation
of families and individuals who have settled in a compact and contiguous geographical
area and share significant elements of common life and shown in their manners, customs,
traditions, and modes of speech. For Manali (2009), a community refers to an
organization or people who are able to undertake projects based on its member’s
experience, resiliency, motivation, and willingness to learn. In archaeology, community
is understood in two ways.
First, it is a place where people actually reside in, an idea quite similar to the
concept of ancient settlement.
Second, it is a group of individuals who live near and interact with each other. An
active community is an organization of people who strategize, conceptualize, implement,
and evaluate a program (Bunagan et al., 2009). The definition of a community may vary,
but certain communities are noticeable when explaining and describing the concepts
(Norman, 1998).
In Genesis 1:27 of the Old Testament, the word community encompasses all God’s
creation in the universe, including man and woman, whom He ceated in His own image.
He allowed them to have dominion over all living things and other natural creations. In
addition, God placed the first man and woman are not created to live in isolation from one
another. The first framework established in understanding the essence of a community
concentrates on the relationship of the Lord with His creation.
Sociological Concept of the Community
Sociological speaking, the family is the smallest unit of the society. It is
composed of the immediate and non-immediate members, while a community is
composed of different families who live in the same place and share the same interests.
The activities of a family that are also conducted by a community include sharing common
resources, working for a common good, and building harmonious relationships.
These central qualities of a family are also the basic building blocks of any
community. It is believed that stronger families help develop stronger communities. An
individual person can form a family, a family can form a community, and a community can
form a nation.
Aesthetic and Moral Values of a Community
The aesthetic and moral values of a community consist of the guiding and
sometimes paradoxical ideas that its members hold, e.g., how they know what is good
from bad, beautiful from ugly, and right from wrong. The justifications for the set values
of communities are necessary in explaining their actions.
As a community develops, its values change. A change in value may results from
innovations in technology or the social hierarchy. Examples of values include solidarity,
commitment, mutuality, and trust.
It was Greek philosopher Aristotle who first postulated the concept of community
as a group established by people with shared values. That initial definition has been
refined and expanded throughout the years. It has been recognized, for example, that
people can belong to different types of communities:
(1) Communities of place, in which people are linked in the geographical sense;
(2) Communities of memory, in which people who may technically be strangers share a
morally significant history; and,
(3) Communities of face- to -face personal interaction, in which people are governed by
sentiments of trust, cooperation, and altruism (Boyles, 1997).
How, then, can a community be understood at the beginning of the 21st century?
What will its future be in the time to come?
Community Needs Assessment
A community needs assessment is a process in which the problems, issues, and
concerns of the community are identified by using several tools. Needs assessment,
social analysis, or community diagnosis is a concrete basis for the formulation of
programs. It reflects the sentiments, needs, aspiration, and recommendations of the
community. It becomes significant when conducted as the students get integrated with
the people. Assessing the needs of the community is a prelude to effective program
implementation. It hopes to solve the problems, issues, and concerns of the people in
the locality.
In determining the areas for improvement in a community, the following steps
should be taken:
1. Gather information about community’s attitudes and opinions in order of
importance.
2. Determine how citizens rank local issues, problems, and opportunities.
3. Give the citizens in determining policies, goals, and priorities.
4. Evaluate current programs and policies.
5. Speculate on what the people are thinking and what they may really want.
Steps in Conducting a community Needs Assessment
The steps in conducting a needs assessment as follows:
1. Establish a working committee to solicit community involvement and develop
plan of action.
2. List important as aspects or areas that need to be analyzed.
3. Identify the population to be surveyed.
4. Determine the information needed.
5. Select a random sample or people to survey.
6. Develop and pre-test a questionnaire.
7. Collect the information gathered.
8. Analyze the data.
9. Go back to the community to validate the results or findings.
10. Finalize the report.

Data Gathering Methods for Community Needs Assessment

1. Focus group discussion (FGD) by key informants
The key informants of the community are the people who hold socially relevant
positions such as educators, public officials, clergymen, business representatives, or
volunteers.
2. Community forum/assembly
 This involves holding group events which include the entire community. Such
events give visibility to the leaders and raise the status of the community; however, they
require extensive planning and publicity. Participatory action research uses this method
effectively.
3. Public records
Public records like the national census provide social and demographic data of the
community. The data include the profile of the population such as age, gender,
educational level, among others.
4. Survey
Surveys and questionnaires involve asking individuals in the community about their
everyday needs. These can be implemented through the following:
a. Mailing questionnaires to randomly selected members of the community
b. Doing telephone surveys
c. Handing out survey during assemblies
d. Posting questionnaires on the internet

Needs Assessment Survey

A needs assessment survey is conducted to identify community needs which are
necessary for subsequent actions. This survey contains a set questions to be answered
by people in the community through personal or telephone interview, online or face-to-
face surveys, or email or written correspondences. The following data re gathered in a
needs assessment survey:
1. Historical data
2. Geographical data
3. Political and legal data
4. Demographic data (e.g., age, size, race, growth patterns, and population
distribution)
5. Economic data (e.g., the nature of the economic base in relation to the social,
cultural, educational, moral, and cultural superstructure)

Roles of the Community in a Needs Assessment

The roles of the community in a needs assessment are as follows:
 1. Help identify interest groups and citizens who can be a part of working
committees.
2. Facilitate a group discussion to determine important issues and priorities.
3. Select the sample to be surveyed and design a system to identify respondents.
4. Provide a pool of questions from which the working committees draw upon in
addressing issues and concerns.
5. Design a way of distributing and collecting survey questionnaires and encoding
and analyzing the result data.
6. Provide summary reports of data.
7. Suggest programs whereby results can be reported and strategies on
community involvement solicited.
8. Work with citizens come up with well-informed course of action.

CONCLUSION
A community needs assessment identifies the strengths and resources available
in the community to meet the needs of children, youth, and families. Community
assessment is a systematic examination of the community status indicators for a
given population that is used to identify key problems and assets in a community.