Meeting information needs? A review of ten years of multisector coordinated needs assessment reports
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In 2015, ACAPS undertook a review of 105 multisectoral coordinated needs assessment (CNA) reports released over the previous ten years. The objective of the review was to determine trends in reporting relevance and methods, and to identify factors that influence the completeness and speed of reporting.
Using a list of over 90 information needs, we found that the amount of useful information increased considerably over the years. More recent reports more often include essential information, such as the total number of people affected by a crisis event, and the techniques used to collect data.
Some weaknesses remained throughout the period under review, however. Few reports provide an estimation of the number of people affected per sector. Sex and age disaggregated data (SADD) is largely missing and disaggregation of needs by population group (e.g. host communities, IDPs) is rare. While more recent reports are more likely to include information on data collection techniques, such information is still generally lacking: less than half of all reports provide readers with the sampling strategy and the limitations of the field data collection, while around 60% of reports did not include the questionnaire.
Three factors are closely associated with completeness of the reports and/or the speed with which they are produced: preparedness before the event, use of a secondary data review, and support from assessment experts such as the Coordinated Assessment Support Section in OCHA or ACAPS.