Division of Laboratory Systems: Creating a 
Training Needs Assessment for Your Laboratory

I'll read two "disclaimers," The first is the external presenter, and the second one is for 
P.A.C.E.® credit, and then introduce our next group of speakers.  
Slide decks may contain presentation material from panelists not affiliated with CDC. 
Presentation content from external panelists may not necessarily reflect CDC's official position 
on the topics covered. Next slide, please.  
CDC, our planners, and our presenters wish to disclose that they have no financial 
interest or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products, suppliers of 
commercial services, or commercial supporters. 
And now, I'd like to introduce our next group of expert presenters. Our first presenter is 
Miss Breyanna Mikel. 
She's a health scientist for the Training and Workforce Development Branch and the 
Division of Laboratory Systems at CDC. 
She has over seven years of experience in health promotion and education, 
program development, program evaluation, health disparities, and child adolescent health. 
Breyanna currently leads various evaluation projects such as evaluating laboratories' 
likelihood of using virtual reality headsets in training; ZenVR, a VR mindfulness app that aims to 
reduce stress levels; and the ongoing data monitoring and evaluation efforts for the CDC 
OneLab.  
Our next presenter is Amber Eberhardt. She is a health scientist and program evaluator 
for TWDB and the Division of Laboratory Systems here at CDC. She has over six years of 
experience in program evaluation, qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Amber started her 
career at CDC and the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities in the 
Birth Defects Branch as an epidemiology assistant. She currently leads a large-scale evaluation 
project of the CDC's OneLab initiative.  
And our third speaker is Sudaba Parnian, who holds a decade of experience as a 
dedicated monitoring and evaluation professional and adaptive data analysis. Currently, she's 
serving as the monitoring and evaluations manager of Quality Systems and Analytics at APHL. 
She guides evaluation initiatives, examines data, and crafts comprehensive reports, visuals, and 
insightful conclusions. With the privilege of being a Fulbright scholar and a history of 
collaboration with the global organization, Sudaba remains committed to merging diligent 
analysis with thoughtful foresight in pursuit of meaningful impacts.  
Our next three speakers are Miss Breyanna Mikel, Amber Eberhardt, and Sudaba 
Parnian. Over to you, ladies. 
Thank you so much, Alicia, for the warm introduction. If we could go to the next slide.  
Wonderful. So welcome, everyone, and happy Wednesday. 
I hope that Day 2 of the OneLab Summit has been treating you all very well.  
And thank you again for joining us for the second session today, titled "Expectations 
versus Reality-- What a Training Needs Assessment Can Tell You About Your Laboratory," which 
is eligible for P.A.C.E.® credit. As already mentioned by Alicia, I am Breyanna Mikel of the CDC, 
and I am joined today alongside both Amber and Sudaba. 
And so today, we will be covering a brief overview of a training needs assessment, or a 
TNA for short, how to develop a training needs assessment, how to collect data for a training 
needs assessment, and finally, we'll see some real-world examples of training needs 
assessments. 
So, after attending today's basic level instructional session, you should be able to 
describe what a training needs assessment is, the data collection tools needed for a training 
needs assessment, and the steps taken to conduct one. 
Additionally, you should be able to identify, understand, and prioritize the training 
needs in the laboratory; understand and explore how needs assessment principles can be used 
to address training needs in the laboratory; and finally, apply proven strategies from past 
experiences to enhance participation rates in needs assessment surveys, ultimately ensuring 
comprehensive data collection.  
Alicia already touched base on this as far as our disclosure statement. So, we can go 
ahead and go to the next slide. So, to level set, I did want to share just a list of common terms, 
which the definitions will be dropped shortly in the chat for your awareness. For the sake of 
time, I will not go over each term and its definition in complete detail, but definitely feel free to 
utilize the definitions that will be provided. Thank you so much for dropping those in. 
That said, I will now turn it over to Amber, who will be providing an overview of a 
training needs assessment. Over to you, Amber. 
Thanks, Breyanna. Hi, everyone. My name is Amber Eberhardt. I am a health sciences 
program evaluator at CDC. And in this portion of the presentation, I'm going to provide you all 
with a brief overview on what a training needs assessment is and how it can ultimately benefit 
your laboratory or organization.  
So needs assessments are conducted in various different industries and fields. You may 
be pretty familiar with the term or have even utilized them within your own organization. But 
to understand — ultimately, it's used to understand the overall needs and assets of an 
organization or population of interest. 
So, while this process may be described differently in every industry, generally speaking, 
a needs assessment is a comprehensive process that involves identifying the current needs and 
assets of an organization, community, or population.  
So more specifically, a training needs assessment is the process of identifying training 
needs and assets based on the assessment of current skills, knowledge, and abilities within the 
organization. Training needs assessments ultimately help organizations better understand the 
gaps that exist in overall organization performance. So, for the purposes of this presentation, 
we're going to hone in more on the training needs assessment aspect.  
So before conducting your training needs assessment, there are essentially three 
different levels to consider. The first level is organizational, and organizational assessments 
analyze the training needs by better understanding the gaps in skills, knowledges, and abilities 
of an organization as a whole. 
So, there are several factors, such as demographics, political trends, technology, the 
economy, that play a huge role in organizational-level assessments. While as the second level is 
occupational, or also known as task, the second level can also be known as operational in some 
models. But for the purposes of this presentation, we will refer to this level as occupational.  
So similar to the organizational level, as you see on the screen, occupational assessment 
identifies and analyzes the gaps in skills, knowledge, and abilities in an occupational group. So, 
this assessment is used to better understand skills, knowledge, and abilities for employees to 
successfully complete their job.  
And then the last and third level is individual. So pretty self-explanatory. But the 
individual-level assessment identifies and analyzes the skills, knowledge, and abilities for an 
individual. So, this assessment is used to better understand training gaps for employees to 
ultimately enhance work performance. So, for the purposes of this presentation, we will focus 
primarily on organizational and occupational-level assessments.  
So, there are many benefits to conducting a training needs assessment that you may or 
may not be aware of. But I would really like to highlight three main reasons why it's important 
to formally assess the training needs within your organization.  
So, the first reason assessing your training needs is important is because it provides 
data-driven evidence. And so having data-driven evidence on training needs on your 
organization or specific occupational group allows for better-informed decisions, particularly 
real-time decisions as it relates to training and workforce development. 
The second reason assessing your training needs is important is because it provides 
clear organizational direction. And so, identifying and understanding the gaps and training 
needs within an organization allows for better organizational strategy and allows organizations 
to assess whether current skills, knowledge, and abilities within the organization itself are 
meeting mission-critical needs, which is really important.  
And then the third reason I would like to highlight why a training needs assessment is 
important is because it promotes organizational growth. And so, by understanding 
organizational training needs, it allows organizations to meet needs by improving skills, 
knowledge, and abilities from an organizational, occupational, and individual level.  
So now that you all know what a needs assessment is, you understand the importance 
of doing — or conducting a needs assessment, rather — you may be sitting here asking yourself 
right now, how often should I conduct a training needs assessment in my organization? And the 
short answer is, it depends. And I'm going to give you a little bit more explanation to this 
answer, just to give you a little context. 
So, if your organization has the capacity, you may be able to conduct a training needs 
assessment annually. However, just being realistic, knowing that there are organization 
priorities and things that may happen throughout the year, you may not be able to conduct a 
needs assessment for — every two to three years, rather. So, it's important to consider external 
factors to determining the cadence of conducting a needs assessment, such as organizational 
strategic planning and funding cycles and/or periods.  
So now that we understand what a training needs assessment is, let's dive a little bit 
deeper into how to develop one. So, this is, generally speaking — on the screen, you see key 
components of a needs assessment report. And you may be familiar with this structure, with 
different scientific reports that you've done. But a training needs assessment generally is 
communicated in a report format, such as the components that are listed on the screen.  
So, there are four key components to a training needs assessment. The first component 
is an introduction or background section. So generally speaking, the introduction and 
background section describes the purpose and overall goal of your needs assessment. And 
additionally, this section provides background information about what you are assessing.  
The second component is the methods section. And so, this section describes the types 
of data that you'll be collecting and how the data will be collected. So, in this section, you can 
use, or include frameworks or approaches to guide your assessment. And so later in today's 
session, Breyanna is actually going to cover some of those different approaches to collecting 
data to assess your training needs. 
And then the third component is results and/or findings section. So that's pretty self
explanatory. But this section provides findings and interpretation of data collected from your 
training needs assessment.  
And then the last and final component is the conclusions and recommendations section. 
So, this section provides overall conclusions and recommendations from your training needs 
assessment based on the data that's collected. So, your recommendations should be based on 
findings and interpretation, so essentially, data-driven recommendations. So now, I will turn it 
over to Breyanna to discuss the steps to conduct a needs assessment. Over to you, Breyanna.  
Thank you so much, Amber. So now that we've had the chance to level set about a 
needs assessment and training needs assessments, we'll shift to the overall steps that are 
needed to conduct one. You'll need to begin with planning your needs assessment. So, for 
example, in somewhat of what Amber touched on, is your timeline, asking the question of who 
or what staff you'll be reaching out to, how you'll go about collecting the data, how will you 
analyze the data? Essentially, your methodology is the recipe that you'll follow for your needs 
assessment cake.  
Then you'll move on to developing questions. That's if you want to do a primary data 
collection from scratch. Or you'll look for some existing data collection tools, for example, 
different surveys that already exist within your organization, or maybe those accrediting bodies 
and organizations that have regular needs assessments and you can kind of pull from their 
questions or just use their data and information to help determine what you can implement 
within your organization. 
From there, again, if you're doing the primary data collection — or rather, both of them 
— once you have your questions and/or your data collection tools or surveys, you'll administer 
the survey and begin collecting and/or reviewing the data, which we'll get into in the coming 
slides. Finally, you'll analyze the data and use the findings to help inform and/or determine the 
training needs and/or trainings that you should offer to your staff and/or your organization. 
So, when conducting a needs assessment and collecting data, the data will ultimately 
help you answer some of the questions that you may have about your training staff or your 
laboratory needs, or even help explore questions that you didn't even consider or think about. 
It'll also allow you to identify what may be high priority for your laboratory to focus on, such as 
a specific lab competency, or maybe it could be an opportunity as it relates to developing 
leadership skills among senior staff or those that are in leadership roles. 
So that said, this brings us to questions that you all probably have as you're listening to 
Amber and I cover the fundamentals of a needs assessment. So, what data do I need to assess 
my laboratory needs, and what data is out there that I can use? So essentially, there are various 
types of data that you can collect and use to help plan or conduct said needs assessment. We 
will discuss and go through the various types of data collection tools that you will be able to 
use. 
And so, before we jump into those specific data sources and data collection tools, I did 
want to introduce the different types of data that can be gathered. So, I know I mentioned both 
primary and secondary data collection. The first, being primary, is often a type of data 
collection that you use that consists of real-time data that you or someone on your team is 
currently collecting for the sake of your research needs.  
So, an example of this would be developing a short, five-question survey to administer 
to your staff or team to see what skills that they need to improve on, or what are some skills 
that they would want to pick up and learn? Some other data sources aside from a survey 
include, but are not limited to, observations and interviews. And again, we'll cover a full list of 
them in the coming slides. 
The other type of data and data collection that you can do to help determine your lab's 
needs is the use of secondary data. So that secondary data consists of data that has been 
previously collected or gathered by another person, organization, or agency. Secondary data 
can be used for environmental scans to see what others in the industry or field are doing as it 
relates to your needs, as well as your laboratory needs.  
Some of the data sources that can be used in secondary data collection include 
websites, such as APHL's comprehensive and rapid needs assessment, which we'll be discussing 
later on in this session as well. Other sources may include journal articles, reports, books, 
government publications, but again, that list is not an exhaustive one.  
Of course, as we're discussing and exploring the different types of data collection 
methods, I do want to offer both the pros and cons to each. So for primary data collection, 
some of the pros include that you have more control over what types of questions and data 
that you want to gather because you are able to develop and use your own data sources in the 
form of those surveys, the interviews, the focus groups, what have you, which will then allow 
you to have your own data that speaks to your laboratory, that will help with the data-driven 
decision making that Amber touched upon during her section. 
Some of the limitations, however, is that it can be time- and labor-intensive, just to be 
quite honest, especially depending on your organization's capacity. So, do you have enough 
people to actually collect the surveys, to analyze the data, to clean the data, things of that 
nature? That said, you will likely receive raw data that might require a little bit of manipulation. 
And again, you just might not have time for that with competing priorities related to your 
mission.  
So, moving on to secondary data, it is certainly less time-consuming. So that's certainly a 
benefit to utilizing it. Typically, there is a good variety of data sources and resources, so you can 
kind of mix and match, too, to help inform what you want to do within your lab or your 
organization. 
Specifically, you'll be able to see research that other individuals, organizations, and 
agencies have conducted in order to address a workforce development concern. So could it be, 
we have a lot of folks retiring. How can we make sure that we're capturing knowledge and 
information before they retire? Or we're seeing a lot of entry-level people come in, but they 
don't stick around for mid-level purposes. What's the why behind that?  
So, while having all of that information available from your previous research and data is 
great, some of the secondary data limitations are, it is not one size fits all. So just because it 
worked for another organization or another laboratory, that does not necessarily mean the 
questions will be helpful for you and your lab. Additionally, that data may not necessarily be in 
real time, because you do have to collect the data and then publish it. And then by the time the 
journal article or whatever data is readily available, it could potentially be outdated.  
So now that we've covered primary versus secondary, we'll also do a quick level set of 
quantitative versus qualitative data. We'll begin with quantitative, which are your numbers. So, 
this could be the number of staff that are properly and correctly collecting specimens, the 
percentage of entry-level staff that pass the packing and shipping course, or the number of 
laboratory managers and supervisors that have taken a leadership course.  
Again, these are just frame of references for the sake of an example. So, there's 
certainly other quantitative data that you can collect based off of your laboratory. Definitely 
feel free — because I'm not sure, with the chat feature, but if you would like to in the Q&A, we 
would love to hear from you all. So, if you want to share some quantitative data that you feel 
would be beneficial for collecting and using for a needs assessment, certainly feel free to share 
with us. We would love to hear. 
Now, moving on to qualitative data, that is going to be your non-numerical data and 
information, so not something that we can just do counting beans or checking boxes and check 
marks and counting that. It'll be more so those open-ended questions that you may see on a 
survey, such as, please share any additional trainings that you would be interested in taking or 
participating in. 
Qualitative data can also consist of simply observing your staff as they're doing routine 
procedures. And if you notice that something's off, you make a note of that and you realize or 
count how many times across your laboratory folks might have made a minor mistake, or 
maybe even a major mistake, and realize, hey, it might be time for another refresher training of 
some sort. 
You can also conduct interviews or focus groups with your staff. So again, with those 
interviews, focus groups, observations, they are going to take a bit of time and some resources. 
So just keep that in mind for your particular lab and your capacity. 
So, when talking about the interviews, an example would be, maybe you're thinking of 
developing a training geared towards laboratory managers and supervisors. So, one thing you 
could do is interview those managers and supervisors before and after a certain supervisor
level training course that they may have to take. And in those interviews, you can ask what the 
managers and supervisors, what their thoughts are on the course, what do they feel like the 
course is missing as it relates to their daily jobs and roles and duties, specifically around their 
thoughts and attitudes around their leadership skills. 
So now, we will go into a little bit more detail about the different types of data 
collection or evaluation tools that exist, both on this slide and the next slide. This is not an 
exhaustive list, so there are different ones that are available, but I wanted to include some of 
the more highly used ones that exist out there.  
So, for example, I know I touched on surveys and questionnaires. I feel like that's one 
that the majority of folks are very familiar with. And I made sure to include for all the different 
types of data collection tools, the format, whether it's qualitative, quantitative or both, some 
examples that are relevant to you all with the work that you do in the laboratories, some of the 
strengths with that as well as some of the limitations. 
So, I will pause there because I don't want to read through everything. I'll give it about a 
minute. And I know the session is being recorded, so this information will be available at a later 
date as well. 
Okay, we can go to the next slide. And so, some additional examples of data 
collection include records and attendance. This is one that I really wanted to highlight because 
it's not one that most people kind think of as far as a data collection tool, so to speak.  
But it's one, along with registration forms and sign-up sheets, that's very important and 
telling because it lets you know what folks are interested in taking, how often you should 
probably offer a training. Let's say it's a very popular one that a lot of folks sign up for and are 
really excited about, but you're only able to offer it one time a year — once a year. That will 
help inform you that, hey, maybe we should offer it once a quarter, once a month. That way, 
we can give folks the opportunity to sit and take this training or complete this training. And we 
can go on to the next slide.  
So, we have our resource, because I know that was a question that did pop up in the 
Q&A as far as, hey, is there a resource? Where can I go to see what an example of a checklist 
for a needs assessment consists of? We have that for you. So certainly feel free to utilize the 
link that will be dropped in the chat for that. But that concludes our portion of just level setting 
what a needs assessment is, how to go about it. I will now turn it over to Sudaba, who will share 
her experience of conducting needs assessments in a real-world setting. So over to you, 
Sudaba.  
Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Sudaba Parnian. And as Alicia introduced, I'm very 
honored to be here. Thank you, Breyanna and Amber, for your great presentations. I'm here to 
talk about the different approaches that APHL took while doing a training needs assessment.  
And at APHL, we are following the same structure as Breyanna and Amber shared, and 
we are using the same terminologies. Next slide, please. 
So, during this presentation, I'm going to talk about two things.  
First, compare APHL technical training needs assessment approaches, the different 
versions that we have, from the thorough one to the more detailed one, and then talk about 
our next approaches about refined and systematic training needs assessment if you are 
planning for the future. Next slide, please.  
So, the first example that I want to talk about is the comprehensive training need 
assessment. This has been the traditional way that, at APHL, we have been assessing the 
training needs of our member laboratories. And one example is the 2018 TNA. Next.  
So, in this example, there are three main things that are actually covered. This is a 
thorough assessment, meaning that the participation is, of course, high and our target audience 
is a broad audience. And we are looking for more longer-term training needs to assess, let's say, 
the public health community training gaps. 
This TNA was distributed to approximately 5,000 recipients in 2018, and it collected data 
for about six weeks. And we did not have a great response rate. It was 17% response rate, but it 
did produce great publications that are out there in APHL website that my colleague will share 
the link later in the chat.  
So, this was a thorough assessment. The audience were, of course, a bigger group. And 
we took insights from staff and supervisors, meaning we asked staff — laboratory staff, for 
instance, in this case — what their training needs were, what they felt were their training 
needs, and we asked their supervisors what they feel the staff's training needs are.  
And using that data, we had statistical analyses and came up with the top training gaps 
around the nation. We also looked at the training preferences and priorities. There were 
priority topics. And there were some different delivery methods. This was before COVID, so in
person, in-classroom sessions were of course, at the time — had high interest.  
And of course, most of our training topics and the data that we had showed that the 
delivery method is preferred to be in-person, but we did have e-learning and self-paced 
followed by that.   
So, that has changed over time, especially with COVID and remote work and the ability 
to hold trainings and workshops more virtually. Next, please. 
So, the findings showed that there is, of course, some top training needs across 
community. There are similar gaps that, in most laboratories, I would say the top ten, there 
were a lot of matches and a lot of similarities between the top training needs that we found, as 
well as their method of delivery, as I mentioned. That was about the 2018. And the report is 
available on our APHL website as well. Could you please advance it for me? Thank you. 
The next example that I want to talk about was a rapid TNA. So, we again needed to do 
a training need assessment, and that happened in early 2021. As you can guess, it was right 
after the pandemic hit and it was during the pandemic. And we needed to do a refresher 
training needs assessment, meaning we needed to assess, now, what our members and 
laboratorians need. Next, please. 
So, with the agile adaptation, or the rapid TNA that we had, again, we use a survey 
platform. However, considering the time of our laboratory directors and APHL members, as well 
as the COVID testing, we had a period of two weeks to gain the responses from the team. It was 
difficult, with the survey fatigue, to have a high response rate.  
So, we recruited — actually, assigned — our APHL staff members to serve as 
interviewers and call 99 COVID testing laboratories in the US and ask the questions that we 
have on training needs assessment. We had close to 80% — to be exact, 78% — response rate 
for this training needs assessment. 
It was quick. It served the immediate need that we had at the time. And it served a 
specific target audience that we were looking for.  
We had the team of interviewers conducting interviews on the phone, talking to 99 
public health laboratories who had testing at the time and directly putting the information in 
the electronic platform that we have for the survey. 
Another highlight of this rapid TNA was that it identified essential training needs. So, it 
identified training priorities. What are the priorities right now? What are the priorities in this 
field versus another field? Next, please.  
So, as I mentioned, it served an immediate need and a specific population, which, at the 
time, was the testing public health laboratories. And we could obtain quick responses to 
address the urgent training needs questions at the time. And again, reports are available on the 
APHL website for this training needs. And it's called the COVID-19 Training Needs Assessment 
Report. Next, please.  
We looked at the traditional training and then also saw the benefits of the rapid 
training. However, there were some challenges with that, too. There was a lot of pressure on 
our surveyors or the interviewers — and respondents. So, for the traditional mode, there is a 
lot of pressure on the respondents, trying to figure out 40 to 50, even more questions and 
answering them. And on the rapid mode, the interviewers had to put a lot of time and effort.  
The comprehensive one, it's valuable for high-level, I would say, overall needs, the 
traditional TNA that we had and the example that I shared from 2018. And it really is for a 
broad target audience though it is a lengthy survey, and it could somehow affect the response 
rate.  
On the rapid, it's for a specific target population. It serves a correct need. And there is 
also shorter surveys because it's delivered in a form of an interview. Next, please.  
So, looking ahead and what, actually, our APHL team and the ones who are — we are 
working on the training needs assessment — 
we made a shift from the traditional TNAs. And we are doing a real time TNA, or training 
needs assessments. Next, please.  
So, in this real-time assessment, we have different training needs and different 
templates or tools for each scientific area. So, there are no same questions for all scientific 
areas for everyone. So, one person had to take 50 questions and answer things that are not 
related to that and see options that are not related to their field, but they are actually scientific 
area specific.  
We are working on widespread promotion of QR codes at conferences, so these training 
needs assessments be available in real time and online. So anytime, people can access it and 
provide their input from each laboratory or from our target audience. We are working to have it 
accessible via Learning Management System, which creates ease of access for participants as 
well.  
We have collected one round of data, and the data are available. As my colleague put it 
in the chat, the reports are available in the APHL website under Training Needs Assessments. 
We are working to put together all of these in a dashboard so it's continuously being monitored 
as well as observed. And once we launch the real-time need assessment officially, everything 
would be out there. Next, please. 
And here are some of the examples of the reports that we have built. Feel free to look at 
different reports that's provided in the link and let us know if you have any questions. Next.  
And thank you so much. The refined TNA approach has helped us get the pros of both 
the comprehensive and TNA methods, and it helps us have the training more accessible and 
timelier for our participants, as well as helping the leadership and their strategic decision
making. Thank you very much for your time. 
Thank you, ladies. Well, it looks like we don't have any questions, or the questions that 
we did have, they have been answered. So, if no one has any other questions, I'll turn it over to 
you, Blanche. 
Thank you, Alicia. And thank you, ladies, for such rich information about training needs 
assessments. We all know how important training can be to the work that we do. And so, 
making sure that we are figuring out what types of training and what training topics are needed 
is really critical to make sure that we're successful in our respective roles. So, thank you all very 
much.  
We're going to take a short break and we will be back to talk about our next topic. And 
we look forward to seeing you at — let's see here — at 1:30. But before we go, I do want to 
make sure that everybody is aware that P.A.C.E.® credits or P.A.C.E.® contact hours are 
available for the training needs assessment presentation. 
In order to receive a P.A.C.E.® certificate after listening to the presentation that you just 
listened to today, make sure that you log into your OneLab REACH account, visit the link that's 
included in the chat, and use the passcode to complete the evaluation within two weeks.  
As I mentioned before, you need to be logged into your OneLab REACH account to 
access the evaluation. You'll also receive an email containing these instructions at the end of 
the day if you miss the link in the passcode that we've had in the chat.  
P.A.C.E.® certificates should be immediately available after you complete the evaluation 
on OneLab REACH in your My Learner Hub. And as I mentioned before, we're going to pause for 
a short break while we get Joe Rothschild with us to join us for a live and interactive 
walkthrough of OneLab VR. We'll be back at 1:30. Look forward to this. 
Thanks!