Friday, January 20, 2012

Needs assessment- Recreation and leisure

Posted by Sarah Sweetz Akhza at 8:36 AM
Needs assessment- Recreation and leisure

Recreation and leisure has become one of the most important industries in the modern world. As people goes through the hustle and bustle in their daily life, they need quiet place where they can relax doing what they like. Recreation and leisure is a fast growing industry. With the increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases, recreation and leisure programs are becoming important in fighting these diseases since they keep people occupied and exercising. To have an effective recreation and leisure service program, there must be thorough research on the needs assessment of the any population to ensure that the program initiated meets the need of the target population.  For example a high energy demand program may be unsuitable for the elderly since they may not have the energy to participate in various activities in the program.  A need assessment therefore ensure that the recreation and leisure service programs fits the individual needs of the target population.


This paper will carry out a need assessment to design and implement a roller hockey recreation and leisure program in Community Service City of Guelph among the adult population.


Background of the organization

The city of Guelph was established in 1827 on St. George's day. The city of Guelph is one of the most vibrant communities in Canada. It has more than 120,000 members who participate in its daily activities.  The city of Guelph is situated about 100 kilometers west of Toronto city and in the Southern Ontario.  The city has one of the most advanced research universities, industries like manufacturing, services, and others.  The city of Guelph is also among the fastest economically growing regions in Canada. The city of Guelph is sent in a natural setting with attractive picturesque. It is an organization of choice for individuals who value excellence in life and wellness. To ensure wellbeing of its residents, the city has put in place various recreation and leisure programs including One2One program, Free Assistance in Recreation Card (FAIR), Personal Assistant for Leisure Activities Card (PAL), and many others.


Target market

Most of the recreation programs in the city targets a wider range of population but our main target for the roller hockey will be the adults. Adults make a large segment of City of Guelph population and have been actively participating in recreation activities. As supervisor of city owned rinks, I have observed that majority of those participating in ice related sports and therefore roller hockey would be an appropriate sporting activity for this population. Adults have shown passion for this game as it is thrilling, relaxing, and less risky compare to other ice sports


Designing the program

In the process of designing this program, various stakeholders were contacted to give their inputs regarding the way the program should operate. As a community based sport, there was need to carry out wide consultation with different stakeholders including the community members to increase the acceptability of the program by the community members. Among those who were consulted in designing the program was the management of the city to allocate field where the game would be developed.  Roller hockey is one of the expensive games to set up since it requires a lot of financial input. Therefore financial institutions were also contacted to gauge their willingness to fund the program.


Methodology

This need assessment used a survey research design.  The survey method allowed for collection of data from a large sample. The assessment used a sample of 50 adults selected from within the Geulph city in respect of gender. In designing the program, internal and external data was collected. Internal data was collected inside the city from accounting system, sales reports, client list, website reports, and staff from the city and the previous studies that have been carried out on the program. External data was also used in designing the program. This is the data that originated from outside the organization which include a study on management, cost, and maintenance of roller hockey program obtained from other programs in implementation. This data was obtained from government, international sporting organization, private organizations and others.


Primary and secondary data was collected in the survey. Primary data was collected from questionnaires which were distributed to the randomly selected sample.  Secondary data was collected through review of other secondary source like international sports website, government publication, internally published studies and others.

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