Determining The Importance of Community-Wide Adult Education Needs1

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to develop and test an explicit set of procedures for determining the relative importance of community-wide needs in adult education. Two dimensions of meaning of the term importance were conceptualized: qualitative which refers to the values placed on certain broad goals and needs relating to those goals, and quantitative which refers to the amount of magnitude of need in the community. The procedures developed ultimately result in clusters of needs assigned priority according to their qualitative and quantitative importance. Results revealed a .80 Spearman rank correlation between two sets of rankings derived through use of the procedures. This value is significant at the .01 level. The data suggest that the procedures may provide a reliable way to integrate both the qualitative and the quantitative bases for judging importance.