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“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
― John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love
Conducting thoughtfully designed needs assessments either as surveys or as in- person conversations is the definition of good engagement. Being sure your partners feel welcome and prepared to influence the work reveals that you care about their ability to fully participate and want to offer resources when they can't. Caring is the heart of successful stakeholder engagement.
Caution: Needs assessments are NOT for making your partner selection during recruitment. Using them to meet your needs for the perfect partner is the opposite of what is needed in partnering with stakeholders of research. You are not seeking perfect partners. You are building your team's capacity to work collaboratively with anyone.
More words of caution: If you ask a needs based question, you must be willing to provide the resource to meet that need. For example, if you ask your stakeholder partners if they need closed captioning during meetings, you must provide it. If you ask your partners if they need additional training, you must provide it. We encourage you to use the needs assessments provided here merely as jumping off places. Your true engagement brilliance will shine when you tailor your needs assessment to anticipate resources that meet the needs of your unique stakeholder partners.
The following sample needs assessments can be downloaded and tailored to meet the needs of your future research partners. Your future stakeholder partners may have additional needs not captured by these tools. Challenges you have already anticipated and resources to support your partners participation can be added to these surveys.
Please note: online surveys work best for large groups of people. For assessing the needs of smaller groups or individual stakeholder partners, use them as a checklists for personal conversations to sustain engagement throughout your research partnering journey. Caring about and supporting the needs of others has far reaching rewards that outweigh the challenges.
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