Needs analysis is one of the main issues for designing ESP courses, materials, tests or other evaluation tools (Prachanant, 2012). Needs analysis is defined as “the process of identifying and evaluating needs” of the particular group of people, or target population (Titcomb, 2000). Needs analysis also known as needs assessment. McCawley (2009) defined the needs assessment as the systematic study about “knowledge, ability, interest or attitude of a defined audience or group involving a particular subject (P.3).
The term “target population” is the same as “learners” called by Hutchinson and Waters (1987). The term “needs” generally means something required or wanted (Khan et al., 2011). However, in the field of ESP, “needs” refers to “learners’
Necessities are what the learners have to know to perform in their target situation such as discourse, grammar and vocabulary that are always used in the particular situation. Lacks mean the gap between learners’ current proficiency and the necessities. In other words, lacks are what learners haven’t had to perform in their target situation. The last term in target needs “wants” means learners’ desire (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987; Titcomb, 2000).
To perform the analysis of target needs, which is called target situation needs analysis by Dudley-Evans and ST. Johm (1998), the researcher needs to address the questions as follow (Hutchinson & Waters,
- Linguistic analysis, discourse analysis, genre analysis focus on knowledge of how language is used in target situation.
- Wants focus on the target population’s desire
- Means analysis focuses on the environment where the course is run.
To perform needs analysis for the particular group, the researcher has to understand the procedures of the needs analysis and pay attention to each of steps in order to render the valid and reliable research. McCawley (2009) argues six steps of needs analysis include:
- Write objective - what does the researcher want to learn from needs analysis?
- Select audience - who is the target population or group?
- Collect data – how will the researcher collect the data?
- Select audience samples – How will the researcher select the sample?
- Pick an instrument – What instrument and techniques will the researcher use for collecting data?
- Analyze data – How will the researcher analyze the data.
The data for needs analysis is commonly collected by questionnaires, interviews, observation, analysis of authentic texts, assessment, discussions and record keeping (Dudley-Evans & ST. John,