APPROACHES TO COMMUNITY NEEDS ASSESSMENT - A LITERATURE-REVIEW

In the light of the growing awareness of professionals in the communit y of the need to undertake health needs assessments of the population, this literature review sets out to explore, delineate and critically analyse the various approaches to community needs assessment, to facil itate a greater understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. The r eview commences by highlighting its complex nature, and attempting to define what is meant by 'needs assessment' from the differing perspect ives of three dominant approaches, namely sociology, epidemiology and health economics. It continues by putting forward an argument for the use of the community health profile, being a multi-focal approach to n eeds assessment, combining quantitative with qualitative data, and pro ceeds with a discussion of strengths and weaknesses related to its com pilation, in particular factors relating to reliability and validity o f data sources. The consumer perspective is also reviewed, as are issu es surrounding the ethics of data collection and problems concerning a ggregation of the numerous data sources into meaningful policy. Throug hout the review, issues are discussed with reference to the current po litical context in the United. Kingdom. Equally important is the commu nity nurse perspective, which is integrated into the arguments where a ppropriate.