What "need" means before you ever design or organise anything
Introduction
Every step covered so far — the 8-step design process (Topic 9), organising (Topic 10), and operational arrangements (Topic 11) — assumes that someone has already decided what the capacity development (CD) programme should address. That decision rests on a needs assessment. Before this course goes further into how to conduct one (Topics 13–17), this topic pins down what "need" actually means as a concept, and why it is a more precise, more contested idea than it sounds.
Note the distinction from Practical 1: that exercise had you actually carry out a needs assessment for a training programme. This topic is the theory underneath that exercise — the definitions and classifications that explain why the exercise was structured the way it was.
๐ฏ Learning Outcomes
- State the discrepancy-based definition of "need" and explain why it separates a need from a want.
- Define needs assessment using its standard textbook formulation.
- Explain Bradshaw's four types of need — normative, felt, expressed, and comparative — and why no single type is sufficient on its own.
- Distinguish the levels at which a need can be located: individual, group/organisational, and societal.
- Cross-connect this concept to Topic 3's capacity levels and forward to Topics 13–17 and Practical 1.
๐ Why This Matters
Needs assessment specialists caution that a felt need — something a stakeholder says they want — does not automatically qualify as a genuine need in the discrepancy sense; needs assessors must separate needs from wants precisely because stakeholders' stated preferences do not always track an actual gap in results. A CD programme designed around what people say they want, without checking it against this distinction, can miss the actual capacity gap entirely.
1. Defining "Need": The Discrepancy Model
The most widely used definition of need in needs-assessment literature comes from Roger Kaufman's discrepancy-based model, first developed in Educational System Planning (1972). Kaufman defined need as a noun: a measurable gap between "what is" (current results) and "what should be" (desired results). Needs assessment, in turn, is the formal, systematic process of identifying, documenting, and prioritising these gaps.
This is exactly the same logic already used, without being named, in the Halim & Ali/FAO (1997) chapter on training (Topic 4 and Topic 9's underlying source): a training need exists where there is a gap between "what is" and "what should be" in an incumbent's knowledge, skills, or performance. Naming this explicitly as Kaufman's discrepancy model gives you the formal vocabulary behind that earlier definition.
Need (noun)
A gap between current results and desired results — a state of affairs, not an action or a solution.
Needs Assessment (process)
A formal, systematic attempt to determine and close the important gaps between "what is" and "what should be" (Kaufman & Stakenas).
A key discipline this model enforces: a need should be identified independently of any proposed solution. "We need a training programme" describes a solution, not a need. The actual need is the performance or capacity gap that a training programme might, or might not, be the right way to close.
2. Bradshaw's Four Types of Need
Jonathan Bradshaw's "Taxonomy of Social Need" (1972) is not from the agricultural extension or HRD literature — it originates in social policy — but it has become a standard reference across needs-assessment practice in education, health, and human resource development precisely because it captures how differently "need" can be perceived depending on who is doing the perceiving.
Normative Need
Defined by an expert or professional against a standard or norm — e.g., an extension officer judged deficient against a defined competency standard.
Felt Need
What a person or group says they want or lack, based on their own perception — may not match an expert's normative judgement.
Expressed Need
A felt need that has been acted on — turned into an actual demand or request for a programme or service.
Comparative Need
Identified by comparing one group or area against another that already receives a given service or has a given capability.
⚠️ A Common Misreading
These four types are not ranked, and no single one is sufficient on its own. Normative need privileges expert judgement and can miss local realities; felt need captures perception but not always accurate self-assessment; expressed need under-counts anyone who doesn't come forward to ask; comparative need assumes the comparison group's situation is itself the right benchmark. A sound needs assessment in Topic 13–17 typically triangulates across more than one of these.
3. Where a Need Is Located: Levels of Analysis
Beyond types, a need can also be located at different levels. The Halim & Ali/FAO (1997) chapter's training-needs-identification section (already used for Topics 4 and 9) distinguishes three levels of analysis, citing McGhee & Thayer's (1961) four-step approach to organisational analysis:
| Level | What It Asks | Typical Method |
|---|---|---|
| Organisational Analysis | Where should training/CD emphasis be placed, given the organisation's own goals? | McGhee & Thayer's four steps: state goals and objectives, analyse human resources, analyse efficiency indices, analyse organisational climate. |
| Individual Analysis | What does this specific person need to perform their assigned tasks? | Performance appraisal, interviews, questionnaires, tests, observation. |
| Group Analysis | What discrepancies exist across a group of employees relative to shared targets? | Brainstorming, buzz groups, card sorts, advisory committees, task forces, workshops. |
๐ Cross-Reference — Topic 3
Don't confuse this three-level breakdown with Topic 3's Individual / Organisational / Enabling Environment (Institutional) capacity framework from UNDP (1998). Topic 3's levels describe where capacity itself resides in a system; this topic's levels describe at what scale you analyse a gap before designing an intervention. They are related but answer different questions — Topic 3 is about the object of capacity, this topic is about the method of diagnosis.
4. What Comes Next in the Syllabus
This topic deliberately stays at the level of concepts and definitions. The syllabus develops the practical machinery in the topics immediately following:
- Topic 13 — Approaches in Need Analysis (Performance, Task, Competency), which operationalises the discrepancy model into specific analytical approaches.
- Topic 14 — Needs Survey, the main data-collection vehicle for felt and expressed needs.
- Topic 15 — Data Collection Methods, likely groundable further in the same Halim & Ali/FAO chapter.
- Topic 17 — Task Analysis, which reuses the FAO chapter's Job/Task/Skill-Gap Analysis worksheets already introduced under Topic 9's sourcing.
Cross-reference: Practical 1 (Needs Assessment) is where you already applied a version of this discrepancy logic hands-on, before this theoretical vocabulary was formally introduced.
๐พ Extension Angle
In agricultural extension, a classic illustration of the gap between felt and normative need is a farmer who feels no need for a soil-testing-based fertiliser recommendation (because current yields feel "acceptable") even though soil-test data shows a clear normative need for corrected nutrient management. Extension programming that only responds to felt/expressed need risks under-serving exactly the farmers who most need normatively identified interventions but haven't asked for them.
๐ฎ๐ณ Indian Institutional Context
Krishi Vigyan Kendras are formally mandated to conduct need-based training programmes for farmers and rural youth. In practice this means KVK Subject Matter Specialists combine comparative need (yield gaps versus demonstrated potential in adjacent districts), normative need (deviation from recommended package of practices), and expressed need (farmer requests routed through the KVK's Scientific Advisory Committee) — an applied, if informal, use of more than one of Bradshaw's four categories at once.
๐ Beyond Agriculture
Corporate training needs analysis (TNA) uses the identical discrepancy definition: HR and L&D functions distinguish a performance gap identified through appraisal data (normative/organisational) from an employee's self-reported training request (felt/expressed), and often justify a training budget by benchmarking against what competitor firms already provide their staff (comparative need) — the same Kaufman/Bradshaw vocabulary used in Sections 1 and 2 above, applied in an HR context.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Kaufman, R. (1972). Educational System Planning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Kaufman, R., & Stakenas, R. G. (as cited in secondary needs-assessment literature). Definition of needs assessment as a formal, systematic attempt to determine and close gaps between "what is" and "what should be."
- Bradshaw, J. (1972). Taxonomy of social need. In G. McLachlan (Ed.), Problems and Progress in Medical Care: Essays on Current Research (7th series). Oxford: Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust / Oxford University Press. [Also widely republished; originally from social policy, now standard across needs-assessment literature.]
- Halim, A., & Ali, M. M. (1997). Training and professional development. In B. E. Swanson, R. P. Bentz, & A. J. Sofranko (Eds.), Improving Agricultural Extension: A Reference Manual (Ch. 15). Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
- McGhee, W., & Thayer, P. W. (1961). Training in Business and Industry. New York: John Wiley and Sons. [Cited within Halim & Ali, 1997, for the four-step organisational analysis.]
- UNDP. (1998). Capacity Assessment and Development. New York: United Nations Development Programme. [Cross-referenced for the distinct Individual/Organisational/Enabling Environment framework — see Topic 3.]