Hi Dan: A real needs assessment tends to be an interview. You might be able to do a set of interviews to get a better understanding of what questions to put into your poll. The needs assessments vary depending upon the target group and their problems. A single poll might not capture the necessary details. Needs assessments are critical to my companies business, as we need to understand our customers computational problems. I would think that a similar approach might work here, though it is usually hard to condense everything into a single document before the interview. You might try several sample interviews, see where they take you, and then refine it. Iterate until you are satisfied. Joe Dan Bolser wrote: >Hi, > >Has anyone ever done a survey of bioinformatics needs for an >experimentalist (molecular biology) community? > >I need to survey the (potential) bioinformatics needs of a group of >experimentalists with a wide range of bioinformatics knowledge (from 'some >in-depth specialist' through 'general' to 'none'). > >Ideally I would like to capture both what is currently being used, and >what would be really useful if it were being used. > >The problem is in the last case people may not know what could potentially >be helpful. i.e. they need training and/or the form needs to be >educational (gulp). > >I would be very grateful if someone could point me at a stock form, and I >would be more than willing to help try to create such a stock form from >the condensed knowledge of this community. > >Thanks very much for any assistance, > >Dan. > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >BiO_Bulletin_Board maillist - BiO_Bulletin_Board@bioinformatics.org >https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bio_bulletin_board > > -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Scalable Informatics LLC, email: landman@scalableinformatics.com web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 612 4615