Triangulating Perspectives Summary

Dr. Jill E. Stefaniak, Dr. Misa Mi, and Dr. Nelia Afonso (2015), through their article Triangulating Perspectives: A Needs Assessment to Develop and Outreach Program for Vulnerable and Underserved Populations, demonstrate high quality and effective methodology for conducting a needs assessment. The interest of these researchers lies within the social science realm and focuses in on an underserved population, the homeless. The aim of their needs assessment is to channel the gap between this vulnerable population and multiple resources to healthcare information. This subject is of importance because of the growth in the homeless population and concern from policymakers on how to deal with this national growth (Stefaniak, Mi, & Afonso, 2015).
50). They defend that this technique is used to gather data from various sources to identify health information needs among homeless individuals. An adapted three-tiered approach was used in this assessment to evaluate needs based from the perspectives of the vulnerable population, the care providers, and the educators responsible for creating and spreading intervention or educational materials. This approach considered homeless shelter clients, the staff of the homeless shelter, and members of the community, such as medical students and librarians (Stefaniak, Mi, & Afonso, 2015).
Methods utilized in this evaluation consisted of in-person interviews with homeless shelter clients and online surveys with shelter staff, public librarians, and medical students. A convenience sample was collected from the 4 sources and was comprised of of 22 homeless clientele, 10 staff members, 28 librarians from 17 public libraries, and 40 1st or 2nd year medical students. Needs assessment survey measures were constructed, administers, and tested for validity by applying suggestions and input from the multiple directors of the homeless shelter being evaluated (Stefaniak, Mi, & Afonso,