Performance need

From EvaluationWiki

When we say that children need to be able to read, we are identifying a need to be able to perform at a certain level (literacy), a performance need. This is quite different from a treatment need, where we identify something as a prescription that, if supplied, will bring someone or something up to the needed performance level. So we might say that a child needs reading glasses, or reading instruction, meaning that supplying this will meet their (performance) need to read. It is common in the evaluation context to find people sliding from one of these to the other carelessly, e.g., by saying that a class in elementary school that we have just discovered to be reading well below grade level needs better reading instruction. The fact may be that they may need reading glasses or better home support for reading, or any one of a number of treatments that might meet the performance need. One gets from a demonstrated performance need to a treatment need only by doing a comparative evaluation of the alternative possible treatments, a big step to cross that gap between the two types of need.