Wednesday, August 01, 2018

Undertaking an information needs assessment

A useful resource I came across recently is Undertaking an information needs assessment -a practice guide, which was produced by the UK Health Forum, Research and Information Services team in July 2016. As well as describing steps in carrying out such an assessment (including consideration of ethical issues) there is a short literature review and an Excel file with questions you might ask if part of the assessment is a questionnaire. This "question bank" file is particularly useful as it addresses four different areas (demographics, information needs & resources, organisational culture & service, skills and training) and they have drawn on previous research studies to identify valid options that you might offer for each question in multiple-choice questionnaires. "Information needs" studies do not seem so fashionable as "User experience" studies but are obviously still very important.
http://www.ukhealthforum.org.uk/prevention/pie/?entryid43=55924
Photo by Sheila Webber: roses, Lewes, July 2018

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