The Place to Start

A needs assessment is the cornerstone to effective change in your community. It is the place to start and should be the first step in your community mobilization efforts. It involves collecting and analyzing information to better understand your community's strengths and opportunities.

It can be simple or complex. When done correctly it will document needs and gaps in services, identify potential resources, help establish a vision and the goals and strategies to meet community needs, build consensus and buy-in to the change process, increase your community's capacity for change by fostering collaboration among stakeholders and be used to identify benchmarks to measure your progress in reaching stated goals.

What you need to collect

One researcher put it very simply - you are filling buckets with information to describe what happens in your community. In anti-drug coalitions, as well as for many community mobilization efforts, there are four types of "buckets:

Finding data

In Florida, Community Coalitions have the advantage of a State rich with data. The Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey is conducted statewide each year, with in-depth county statistics provided every other year. This is a baseline that communities can use to begin the process of identifying their own concerns.

However, a wide variety of other data is necessary to clearly define the issues. These include surveys of representative groups, population surveys, surveys of key informants, interviews and participation in the field with users of services and focus groups.

In addition you can find data for your community below:

Analyzing your data

Analyzing the information in front of you, once collected, is critical. Data can be powerful and should be presented in ways that help you plan, build consensus and collaboration in your community. Creating a committee to assist in developing your needs assessment and analyzing is the result is critical.

If you don't have the capacity to do complex analysis, you may choose to team up with others who do. Look to a nearby college or university and to researchers in various agencies.

Using Your Data

Because data have so much power to shape your efforts, it is critical to share your findings in a form people will find useful. Use your most important data to tell a meaningful story that helps spur people to action.

Tools