Go from order-taker to valued performance consultant. You may be pressured to give an immediate “yes” to a training request. Resist. Instead, start playing an essential role in driving your organization forward by using needs assessment to target your training programs to support critical business goals. Organizations need staff to be efficient and effective. That calls for training programs that get to the core of performance issues. A needs assessment ensures that you understand the root of problems like knowledge gaps, performance issues, and product quality and gives you the tools to resolve them. This second edition of Needs Assessment Basics starts with the initial training request and guides you all the way through data collection and making training recommendations. A progressive case study illustrates the seven phases of a needs assessment plan to reinforce each chapter’s content. Part of ATD’s Training Basics series, Needs Assessment Basics will help you develop a foundation that will ensure the training programs you design and deliver will help the organization succeed.

Written specifically to show you how to accomplish the goal of delivering relevant training as a business partner of your organization, this seven-phase needs assessment model teaches you to think organizationally, design effectively, and evaluate how your program links job performance to end results.

Needs Assessment for Learning and Performance offers comprehensive coverage of the knowledge and skills needed to develop and conduct needs assessments and to analyze, interpret, and communicate results to clients and organizations. Though critical to planning any performance improvement system, needs assessments can feel abstract and vague to students who have not yet managed the process in a professional setting. This first-of-its-kind textbook uses a variety of real-world examples to connect major theories and models to effective principles for practice. Each chapter offers guiding questions, key terms and concepts, recommended readings, and case studies illustrating how needs assessment training can be applied. Graduate students and researchers of instructional design, human resources, performance improvement, program evaluation, and other programs will find this volume relevant to a range of academic and organizational contexts.

Needs Assessment Basics is written specifically to show you how to accomplish the important training goal of delivering relevant training as a business partner of your organization. The seven-phase needs assessment model teaches you to think organizationally, design effectively, and evaluate how your program links job performance to end results. Like all books in the Training Basics series, you will find learning guideposts along the way, including dozens of Basic Rules, Notes, and Think About This sidebars that enable the reader to scan the book and pick out and apply concepts immediately.

Evaluation Basics is the perfect tool for individuals wishing to build or enhance practical training evaluation skills from frontline trainers and designers of training to subject matter experts who occasionally function as a trainer. The four carefully constructed chapters on each of Kirkpatrick's classic four levels of evaluation offer you a clear path to success. Plus, you will find two invaluable chapters on how biases creep into all levels of evaluation and a chapter on how to communicate evaluation results effectively. Practical examples, worksheets, checklists, tips, and notes are included throughout the book.

The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.