Standardized needs assessment measures a relatively

Standardized Needs Assessment Measures
A relatively new needs assessme11t methodology e nta i ls devel opin g stand ar dized measures
to assess the needs of a specific popu lation group . For exampl e, Wa nc ata and colleagues
(2006) initially used focus groups and in depth individual interviews to develop a me a-
sure com prising 18 com mon problems experienced by c ar egivers of adults di ag nosed
with schizophrenia. The d if fi cu lties were tran slated into it ems such as "not enough infor-
mation on the illness, its sympto ms and co ur se," "fear of stigmatization and discrimina-
tion ," and " burnout or illness of the carer ."
Using such a measure in other needs assessment research has the advantage of buildi ng
on the wo rk that has gone into identifying and conceptualizing pot entially i mpo rtan t
needs and of using a measure for w hi ch reliability and validity w ill often have be en estab-
lished. A possible di sadvantage is that needs proven relevant to caregivers of adults diag-
nosed \'l'ith schizophrenia in one location may not ha ve the same imp ortance in other s.
Conversel y, items ab out oth er needs that are impo rt ant in a new locale may be missing
from the standardized measure.
Us ing Existing Statistical Information
Another qua ntitat iv e method of co nducting needs assessme nt s is using data th at have be en
previously collect ed . Existing data m ay be available in agency fi les or government data
bank s, for example. Such secondary analyses have the adva nta ge of sparing researchers the
time an d expense of gathering new data. A disadvantage is that on e is limit ed to data th at
someone else considered worth gathering, and po tentially i mportant variables may be
absent or may need to be inferred indirectly from the data that were rec orded .
Reviewing case fil es can be challenging. As a follow-up to a pr eviously completed st udy
on the o ut comes of a specialized domestic violence court (Tutty, McNichol, & Chr istensen,
2008), we are using district attorney files to collect a numb er of va ri ables, including th e
demographic characteristics of tbe accu sed and the victim, whether the victims test ifi ed or
provided a victims impact stat eme nt to the cou rt, and hov,, the trial was resolved.
In contested cases, the files can be very large, literally inches thick! The fi les are created
for the c rim inal jus ti ce system, not researchers, so th ere is no consistent org anization. As
such, collecting dat a from one fil e can take several hours. Considerable information may
not be recorded. Lawyers are not necessarily as interested in demographic characteristics
such as ethnicity or age as mo st resear cher s are, a nd so litt le of this can be f ound in th e
files. Despite
these
challenges,
if
we are to evaluate the specialized courts, paper flle
reviews are our only optio n to assess whether the co urt s are meeting Lhe needs of bot h the
victims and the accused.