The Place of Values in Needs Assessment

The concept of "needs " is currently driving much of the developmental and evaluative effort in education. Needs as-sessments are mandated by virtually every federally and state funded program as the basis for planning, for developing inter-ventions presumably responsive to the dis-covered needs, and for assessing the ulti-mate impact or utility of those interven-tions. The difficulty, as we see it, with the current conception of needs assessment is that apparently it is based on the implicit assumption that needs are objectively "real " and open to discovery by appropri-ate scientific (value-free) methodologies.1 They are presumed, therefore, to have some legitimate, "natural " claim on energy and resources independent of judgments that individual people may bring to bear about their relevance or appropriateness. They can no more be denied than the self-evident needs for air, food, or water. We proceed on the contrary assumption that needs have no objective reality; they can be discovered only through a value-1 That science is not value free is beyond doubt. An extensive literature showing how science is value