1. Audience Analysis

3. Sections 16. 1 What Is an Audience Analysis
Sections 16.1 What Is an Audience Analysis? & Why Conduct an Audience Analysis?

4. Public Speaking as Shared Activity
The interaction between speaker and audience; speakers jointly create meaning with audiences.
Public speaking is an audience-centered activity in which the speaker considers the needs and interest of the audience.
Audience analysis is the process of gathering information about the people in the audience so a speaker can understand their needs, values, and expectations.
Find an appropriate way to acknowledge and greet your audience.

5. Choose a Worthwhile Topic
Your topic should reflect regard for the audience; audiences do not want to listen to a speech that is too simple or a topic they already know a great deal about.
Many students are tempted to choose an easy topic or a topic they already know a great deal about because it decreases their own workload rather than engaging audience interest.
Choose a topic that is interesting enough for you to research and your audience to listen to.

6. Clarity is Important
Use straightforward vocabulary and avoid convoluted sentences.

7. The Risk of Controversy
Controversial topics are topics about which people disagree.
Many controversial topics confront people’s fundamental and closely-held values.
There are often more than two perspectives on important controversial topics.
How you treat your audience is just as important as how you treat your topic.

8. Adapting to Audience Needs
Audiences differ in their perspectives and readiness to accept new ideas.
Even in a homogeneous audience, an audience composed of people who are similar to one another, different listeners will understand the same ideas in different ways.
Every member of every audience has his or her own frame of reference generated by their unique life experience.

9. Categories of Life Experiences
Demographic information refers to gender, age range, marital status, race and ethnicity, all of which impact an audience’s perspectives and needs.
Socioeconomic status refers to characteristics including income, wealth, level of education, and occupational prestige.
Psychographic information involves the beliefs, attitudes, values, and opinions that are most often difficult to predict.

10. Respecting your audience means that you avoid offending, excluding, or trivializing the beliefs and values they hold.

11. Diversity
Refers not only to racial and ethnic groups, but also to religion, sexual orientation, body size, and physical and mental ability.

12. Respecting Diverse Audiences
Being mindful of diversity means being respectful of all people and avoiding racism, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, sexism, ageism, elitism, and other assumptions.
It’s easy to assume that people from a given culture are just alike, but they’re not; their social roles, life experiences, and circumstances vary.
Frame of reference may be difficult to predict; for instance, we might assume that a successful businessman is primarily interested in profit but learn later that a strong item on his agenda is serving some community need.
Avoid stereotyping, the tendency to assume that people with certain visible characteristics in common also share the same likes, dislikes, values, beliefs, and talents.

13. Avoid Offending Your Audience
Jokes that refer to names and cultural characteristics are insulting and inappropriate.
People are members of groups they didn’t choose and can’t change; we didn’t choose our race, ethnicity, sex, age, sexual orientation, intellectual potential, or looks.
We should avoid speaking as though all scientists are men, all relationships are heterosexual, or all ethnic minorities are unpatriotic.

14. Samovar and McDaniel’s Four Guidelines
Be accurate; present the facts accurately.
Be aware of the emotional impact; make sure you don’t manipulate feelings.
Avoid hateful words; refrain from language that disparages or belittles people.
Be sensitive to the audience; know how audience members prefer to be identified (for instance, Native American instead of Indian, women instead of girls, African American instead of Black, disabled instead of crippled).

15. If you alienate the audience, they will stop listening.

16. Ethical Speaking is Sincere Speaking

17. Credibility
Ethos, or credibility, is the perception that the speaker is honest, knowledgeable, and rightly motivated.
Do you respect your audience as individual human beings?
Do you address their needs and interests?
Is your topic appropriate for them?
Are you sensitive to their values and preexisting beliefs?
Does the audience trust your motivations,
intentions, and knowledge?

18. To Convey Respect, You Must be Sincere
Examine your motives behind your topic choice and the true purpose of your speech.
You must be willing to do the work of making your speech represent reality.

19. Section 16.2 Three Types of Audience Analysis

20. Demographic Analysis
Used to predict audience characteristics.

21. Age
Is an important component of audience analysis because of differences in life experience and perspectives between people in different age groups.

22. Gender
Is important because generally, women have a substantially different cultural experience than men within the same culture.

23. Immigrant Status
Immigrants bring cultural characteristic with them to the U.S., and cultural continuity is considered a healthy source of identity.
Many subcultures and co-cultures also exist along with larger cultural groups.
Many differences exist among these groups; for instance, the beliefs and values of Navajo people are not identical with those of the Cherokee, and the cultural experience of African Americans in Seattle is not the same as that of those in rural Mississippi.
Not all cultural membership is visibly obvious.

24. Religion
Varies widely; it has been found that 85% of Americans identify with at least one of a dozen major religions.
Even within a given denomination, there is variability in degree of devotion, church attendance, and degree of agreement with the teachings of the church.
Within a given denomination, there can be variability between geographic areas; Catholicism in Brazil is different from Catholicism in the Vatican.

25. Group Membership
Academic majors each have their own sets of values, goals, principles, and codes of ethics.
Political parties, campus organizations, and volunteer groups provide other differences.

26. Education
Education provides differences in motivations: some students seek to be educated while others seek to earn professional credentials, while others prepare to make a contribution to society.
Because of the enormous financial investment that goes into education, you can be sure that students are motivated, regardless of what their other motivations are.

27. Occupation
Influences people in their perceptions; for instance, doctors and nurses are guided by different, but important, philosophies of health.

28. Psychographic Analysis
Concerns such characteristics as values, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs.
Psychographic information is not as straightforward or measurable as demographic information; for instance, two people who value “equal opportunity” might define it differently.

29. Preexisting Notions about Certain Topics
Oversimplified views influence whether and how audience members understand the message.
Sophistication in audience members is also important; a sophisticated audience is less likely to “buy into” simplified messages about civil rights history, the ozone layer, and other topics about which a great deal is known.
With a cognitively complex audience, you must acknowledge the overall complexity of a topic before focusing on one dimension.
Preexisting notions about you can be seriously mistaken, but they still influence the expectations.

30. Situational Analysis
Refers to characteristics related to the specific speaking situation.

31. Audience Size Consider the size of your audience.
Smaller audiences allow for more interactive speeches.
With a large audience, you must work harder to produce visual and audio material that reaches people sitting in back.

32. Voluntariness
Refers to whether or not audience members want to be there.
A voluntary audience wants to attend.
A captive audience is required to be there, might be uninterested, or might give only grudging attention.
In either case, you should choose topics and comments that pertain directly to members of the audience.

33. Physical Setting
In a classroom, at least the setting is familiar, whether it’s ideal or not.
If a speech is to be presented in an unfamiliar setting, it’s a good idea to visit ahead of time, noticing factors that will affect how you should present the speech.
Check to make sure all the presentation equipment works.
Check to see if the room will be comfortable.
Check for noise or other distractions.

34. Section 16.3 Conducting Audience Analysis

35. Systematic Strategies for Gathering Audience Information

36. Direct Observation
Examining patterns of behavior can tell you a lot, as long as you are careful how you interpret the behaviors.
Listening in on conversations (only if they’re not private) can tell you what’s on people’s minds.
To listen ethically, you must determine before the fact that the conversation is not private; you may not listen first and then determine it is too private.

37. Interviews
A one-on-one exchange in which you ask questions and a respondent provides answers.
Interviews may be conducted in person, over the phone, or by some written means, such as texting.
They allow for greater depth than surveys.
You may not use interviews to delve into private areas of a respondent’s life.
Interviews are more time-consuming than surveys.

38. Survey
A set of questions administered to many respondents.

39. Conducting Surveys
Surveys are standard sets of questions that can be administered in person, over the phone, or online.
Results must be tabulated.
Online surveys have the advantage of being anonymous.
Results can be collected quickly.
Surveys do not provide an opportunity for the researcher to probe or for a respondent to explain an answer.

40. Conducting Surveys cont.
Make sure your survey questions are directly related to your speech topic.
You may not use survey questions to violate privacy.
Create and consistently use a standard set of questions; do not ad lib or phrase questions differently at different times.
Keep both interviews and surveys short.
Make sure respondents know their participation is voluntary.
Interview or survey at least 10 to 20 people.

41. Conducting Surveys cont.
Remember that people are not always honest in their answers; some may respond with socially desirable responses, or the tendency to give responses that are socially acceptable.
Impression management is intentionally portraying oneself in a favorable light; this might lead to dishonest or inaccurate responses.
Some responses may contain self-deceptive enhancement, or an unconscious way of exaggerating one’s good qualities; in contrast to impression management, self-deceptive enhancement is unintentional.
Frame your questions in such a way as to encourage honesty; for instance, instead of asking “Do you consider body piercing attractive?” instead, ask, “How many piercings do you have?”

42. Focus Groups
A group of three to eight people who meet to respond to questions asked by the researcher. A focus group is usually an anonymous group and their responses can be free-wheeling. With permission, their discussion can be recorded.
You should prepare a limited number of questions.
Your questions should be carefully designed to get at the information you need to understand about their beliefs, attitudes, and values related to your topic.
You must strike a balance between allowing a free-flowing discussion and focusing on your questions; guide the group toward responsible and respectful behavior toward each other.
You should be receptive to their comments, even if they’re not what you want to hear.

43. Using Existing Data
For instance, you can draw information containing information about the majors students have declared.
For non-student audiences, other demographic information is available in reports from the U.S. Census Bureau concerning such things as age, race, and gender.
Other sources exist, such as the Nielsen Company, where demographic information is available down to the level of specific zip codes.

44. Using Your Audience Analysis

45. Prepare Content with Your Audience in Mind
A good audience analysis can help focus your topic.
The last thing you want to do as a speaker is stand before an audience who is highly negative toward your topic before you ever open your mouth.
You can also use your audience analysis to help ensure that the content of your speech will be as clear and understandable as humanly possible.

46. Clarity
One area of clarity to be careful of is the use of idioms your audience may not know.
An idiom is a word or phrase where the meaning cannot be predicted from normal, dictionary definitions.
Idioms are culturally or time-based.
Be careful not to accidentally use idioms that you find commonplace but your audience may not.

47. Adjusting Your Speech Based on Your Analysis

48. Adjustments during Your Speech
The feedback you receive from your audience during your speech is a valuable indication of ways to adjust your presentation.
Watching your audience helps you make specific adjustments to both the content and delivery of the speech to enhance the speech’s ultimate impact.

49. Adjustments to Your Speaking Environment
Your situational analysis may reveal that you’ll be speaking in a large auditorium when you had expected a nice, cozy conference room.
You may need to adjust visual aids.
You may need to use a microphone.
Just be open to altering your original plan to ensure speaking effectiveness.