社會福利需求一直是規劃社會福利政策和相關福利服務方案之重要依據，故本文的主要目的即是想瞭解目前國內社會福利需求評估工作進行內涵與方式。本文選擇了資料庫較為完整的全國博碩論文資訊網為選取研究對象之範疇。經查詢，1986~2005年間共有23篇碩士論文是進行相關的社會福利需求評估。23篇碩士論文中，完成在2001至2005年區間所佔的比例較多，討論的議題約有四分之一是在討論老人福利；研究區域範圍在全國的縣市，以台北市為評估區域的機率最高；研究對象的規模數量差異性大。另外，取得樣本的方法以非隨機方式居多數；資料收集方法有九成是使用單一方法來進行評估，其中以社會調查法為多數；需求之內涵以非現金給付的福利服務需求為主要的需求項目。

Social welfare need has long been the important basis of planning social welfare policies and related welfare service projects. Therefore, this study is aimed to realize what is the process of social welfare need assessment and how it works in Taiwan at present. Electronic Theses and Dissertations System is chosen as the study scope because of its comparatively complete data base. After thorough inquiry, there are 23 master theses about social welfare need assessment from 1986 to 2005. Among those 23 theses, most are finished from 2001 to 2005, and the topic of one fourth is about senior citizen’s welfare. As for the study areas, Taipei City is the priority. As for the study samples, the number varies. Besides, most theses use the non-random sampling to select their study targets followed ; 90％ of those theses uses only one method for data collection, and social investigation method is the most popular one. As for the welfare need , non-cash-paid welfare service need is the main need
item.