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⚠️This is not the official Fair Trade USA partner portal. This is just a temporary website used as we pilot these tools. ⚠️
Needs Assessment Question Bank
Needs Assessment Question Bank
What is the question bank?
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This is a tool to help Fair Trade Committees conduct a Needs Assessment survey. This tool is a guide to help hand pick which questions make the most sense for a given group of people. Needs Assessments should be designed and carried out by the Fair Trade Committee Secretary, Fair Trade Officer, a suitable member of the Fair Trade Committee, or a third party. The individual(s) designing the Needs Assessment survey should work with the Fair Trade Committee, project managers, and relevant community members to decide what questions will provide the most information about needs in the community.
If you haven’t already, please read and review the “How to Plan a Needs Assessment” guide for best practices in conducting a survey and considering when to conduct Focus Group Discussions (FGDs).
The Question Bank contains a list of questions that cover a broad array of topics. You will customize the survey for your Premium Participants or members by deleting the questions that do not fit your situation.
You will see there are Required topics and Recommended topics. You must include some questions for each of the Required topics to be compliant with Fair Trade USA standards. Recommended topics provide additional questions that may be helpful to evaluate the needs of the community, based on our years of experience supporting Needs Assessments. Before selecting questions, it may be helpful to discuss with the committee members which Recommended topics are most helpful for your community.
In most cases, you want your final survey to have 50 questions or less. If you choose 50 questions you can expect the survey to take 15 minutes. Add two minutes for every additional five questions. The survey will take slightly less time if you work with a survey enumerator, however, if the survey respondents have limited literacy and you give the surveys with enumerators, you should expect it to take 25% longer.
How to select your needs assessment questions and topics
How to select your needs assessment questions and topics
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Before you begin, you need to set up an account with KoboToolbox. Once you have your account set up, send your username with the Fair Trade field staff so they can share the question bank with your account (see KoBoToolbox guidance document for detailed steps). Then you can customize your survey by either adding, changing, and/or deleting questions.
Step 1
Go through the questions from each Required topic, marked with a “ * ”.
Step 2
Delete questions that aren’t relevant to your situation, making sure you leave some questions under each Required topic.
Background information
Access to education
Access to childcare
Health and wellbeing
Nutrition
Housing
Step 3
If you are not a fisher, delete the “Environmental resource management” section.
Step 4
If you are not a smallholder (a farmer who participates in a cooperative), delete the “Environmental health, productivity, product quality” section.
Step 5
Do you have more than 50 questions?
To avoid fatigue, Fair Trade Committees are advised not to add more questions from the Recommended topics if they have already selected 50 questions or more.
Step 6
If not, add additional questions from the recommended topics. Talk to your Fair Trade Committee to decide which topics are most important to include.
Financial health and economic security
Community services
Roads, bridges, and community buildings
Gender equity
Co-operative business needs (cooperatives or small producers only)
Step 7
You may wish to change a few questions so they are phrased more clearly for your Premium Participants or members. You may also wish to add more options to the questions with picklists or checkboxes so that the potential answers make the most sense to your participants. Keeping questions and answers exactly how they are in the template will give you consistency so you can compare results from different Needs Assessments. However, sometimes a question won’t make sense to Premium Participants as written, or the answers don’t include a response you expect. In those cases, you can make edits or additions in the survey tool.
Step 8
Your survey is ready to be deployed!
Question bank
Question bank
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Required topics
Required topics
Background information
Date of survey
Name of surveyor (if applicable)
Company name
How long have you worked for this company?
What type of work do you do?
What is the nature of your employment or working relationship?
What is your gender?
What is your age?
What is your civil status?
How many children do you have?
What are your children’s ages?
How many people are in your household?
What is your total household income?
Do you leave your hometown to work here?
Do you live with your children and/or family members?
Where does your family live?
What language(s) do you speak?
What is the highest level of school you have completed?
Access to education
Are you currently studying or attending any classes?
Do you feel you have the required skills and knowledge for the future?
If no, what type of skills and knowledge do you lack?
Do you have children currently in school?
If so, how many children of yours are currently in school?
If you have children who are not in school, why aren’t they in school?
In the following list, please rate in order of expensiveness (where 1 is the least costly and 3 is the most costly) in the education of your children or dependents.
Would you be interested in receiving training in the workplace?
If so, which training(s) would you be interested in receiving?
Access to childcare
Do you have children 12 years or younger?
If so, who takes care of your children while you are working?
How much of your pay do you spend on childcare?
Are you happy with your childcare?
I am not happy with my current childcare because…
Health and well-being
For your general health (NOT an emergency) which best describes where you or your immediate family get medical services?
If you have a medical issue, do you have access to a healthcare service?
If no, why not?
Are you satisfied with the health service providers in your area?
If no, why not?
How far do you travel for routine or general medical care?
What is the distance to the hospital where you go for an emergency or surgery?
If you or someone in your family needs to go to the hospital due to an emergency, how would you get there?
In the past three years, have you been to a dentist?
If so, why did you go to the dentist?
What health care services would you most like to have better access to?
What is the most common way you access safe drinking water for your household?
What type of sanitation does your home use?
In minutes, how long does it take a member of your household to get drinking water?
Is the water you drink unhealthy?
Which of the following are health concerns in your community?
If there are other health concerns in your community, what are they?
Nutrition
Do you feel like you and your family always have enough food to eat?
Where do you usually buy food?
In general, how much of your monthly income is used to buy food for your household?
How often do you eat bread, rice, pasta, tortillas, or potatoes?
How often do you eat protein like meat, fish, eggs, soy or other beans?
How often do you eat fresh fruits or vegetables?
How often do you eat dairy like milk, cheese, or yogurt?
Housing
Is your current home or dwelling...
What is the main building material of your house?
What is the main material of your house’s floor?
What is the main material of your house’s roof?
Is there any part of your house that is not finished?
Are you satisfied with your home?
If no, why not?
What is the main fuel you use to cook your food?
Environmental resource management (Capture Fisheries Standard only)
With management rules, do you think people are affected differently? For example, by area closures, or quotas?
The data that you are collecting, do you think it helps for managing the fishery?
Are the training and tools you have sufficient for collecting the data?
Some species come together to spawn and reproduce, other species have spawning seasons. Do you know the most important spawning areas and seasons of your target species?
Do you think you have sufficient management in place to protect the reproductive seasons and the habitat where they come together?
For the species you’re fishing, what habitat protections must be included in the Fisheries Management Plan?
Do you know which are the key habitats where your species is growing larger or looking for food or shelter? Examples could be seagrass, mangrove or reefs; do you think your group is protecting those places enough?
Do you have dedicated places and sufficient procedures to dispose of waste from vessels, landing sites and processing facilities?
Environmental health, productivity, product quality (small producers only)
In the last 12 months, has your harvest volume changed?
If your harvest decreased, what was the main reason?
Do you have access to all the Personal Protection Equipment you need to do your work?
Recommended topics
Recommended topics
Financial health and economic security
When you have an unexpected need for money (natural disaster, family illness), how do you get it?
Do you ever need to borrow money to cover your regular expenses (food, shelter, school fees)?
Does your family have a savings plan to address any major life expenditures such as marriage, death or medical expenses?
If you had extra money, what would you spend it on or save for?
Does your family save for retirement?
Does your family save for emergencies?
Do you have a bank account in your name, or do you have a joint bank account?
Have you invested money in any recurring deposit, fixed deposit, or mutual fund for a sustainable financial future?
Will you be eligible for any old age benefits or government schemes once you retire from the factory/ workplace?
If you are signed up for a government or company pension fund, will you withdraw the funds before your retirement age once you leave the workplace?
Would you like to retire later than the age prescribed by your workplace?
If you would like to retire later than the prescribed age, why?
Once you retire, will you want to take up another job?
If so, what roles will you prefer?
If so, would you like to take up any training to make you ready for another job?
Before you retire, would you want to shift to another job?
If so, what roles will you prefer?
If so, would you like to take up any training to make you ready for another job?
Do you and your dependents enroll in any life or medical insurance?
How many members in your household are currently working?
Does your family have any other source of income beside your regular job?
Can you seek financial support from your immediate, particularly children or extended family, like relatives after retirement?
Does your family own a house, land, or any other asset to be used as a financial support for old age?
Community services
What services are missing in your community?
Which of these missing services is most important for you?
Roads, bridges, and community buildings
Are your roads paved?
Do you have access to public transportation?
Do you have access to a market that can provide all your household needs?
Do you frequently have issues accessing food or necessities due to lack of infrastructure?
Gender equity
In your opinion, do all genders have equal opportunity to lead in your community?
Do women in your community hold leadership positions?
Can women own property in your community?
Cooperative business needs (SPO only)
If you are a coffee farmer, does your co-operative attend SCA Expo?
Do you receive trainings or attend workshops on farm best practices such as pest and disease management (example: coffee rust), soil health and fertilization, coffee plant renovation (planting new coffee or replacing aged out plants)?
If you do receive trainings or attend workshops, which ones?
Does your organization have a dedicated agronomist?
Do you have access to market reports or information to better understand how to sell your crop on more advantageous or favorable terms?
Do you have a formal internal management system (accounting system, etc.)?
Would you be interested in receiving trainings on best practices (sustainable farming practices or safety in the workplace)?
Resources
Resources
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You can download the contents of this page as a printable document here:
Needs Assessment Question Bank.pdfYou can download some guidance on how to use Kobo here:
KoBoToolbox Guidance for Certificate Holders.pdfPage updated
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