1. Analyzing the Audience
Communications 1020
Instructor: Dave Gagon
To capture an audience’s attention and bring them to your point of view, you must present a topic in ways that are meaningful to your listeners.
Audience analysis is the process of gathering and analyzing information about your listeners with explicit aim of adapting your message to the information you uncover.
This is the single most critical aspect of preparing for any speech.

2. Audience Analysis Evaluate Attitudes Beliefs Values
People tend to evaluate messages in terms of their own – rather than the speaker’s – attitudes, beliefs and values.
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Attitudes reflect a predisposition to respond to people, ideas, objects or events in evaluative ways, judging to be good or bad.
Attitudes are based on beliefs – the way people perceive reality. The less faith listeners have in a subject, the open they are to hearing about it.
Both attitudes and beliefs are shaped by values – people’s most enduring judgments about what is good and bad in life. Values are more enduring than attitudes or beliefs. More resistant to change.
Understanding an audience’s values points you in the direction of their attitudes and beliefs.

3. Audience Analysis Evaluate The topic of your speech You as the speaker
Attitudes
Beliefs
Values
The topic of your speech
You as the speaker
The speech occasion
You are far more likely to sustain your listener’s attention if you can uncover audience members’ attitudes, beliefs and values – or briefly, feelings – toward
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The topic of your speech
You as the speaker
The speech occasion.
Such perspective taking is critical in seeing things from your listener’s point of view.

4. Gauge Listener’s Feelings Toward you as the Speaker
Speaker credibility
Have a sound grasp of the subject
Display sound reasoning skills
Are honest and unmanipulative
Are genuinely interested in the welfare of their listeners
How audience members feel about you will have considerable bearing on their attentiveness and responsiveness to the message.
Research on
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Speaker credibility reveals that people place their greatest trust in speakers who
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Listeners tend to distrust speakers who deviate even slightely from these qualities. But being an expert is not enough to inspire listeners’ trust. We trust only those speakers whom we believe have our best interest in mind.

5. Gauge Listener’s Feelings Toward the Topic
If topic is new to listeners,
Show why it’s relevant
Relate topic to familiar issues and ideas
If listeners know relatively little about your topic
Stick to the basics and include background information
Try to determine what your listeners know about the topic. What is their level of interest? How do they feel about it? Once you have this information, adjust the speech accordingly.
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If the topic is new to your listeners, start by
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showing why the topic is relevant to them.
Relate the topic to familiar issues and ideas.
If your listeners know relatively little about your topic
stick to the basics and include background information.

6. Gauge Listener’s Feelings Toward the Topic
If their attitudes about the topic differ from yours
Make points relevant to their attitudes and beliefs rather than to yours
Seek a common ground
Focus on issues of general social concern
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If their attitudes about the topic differ from yours
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7. Gauge Listener’s Feelings Toward the Topic
If your listeners are negatively disposed toward your topic
Consider modifying or changing your topic.
Give them a good reason why their attitudes are unfounded.
Give them a good reason for changing their attitudes.
If your listeners are negatively disposed toward your topic
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8. Appeal to Your Listener’s Concerns
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Appeal to Your Listener’s Concerns
As a general rule, people give more interest and attention to topics toward which they have positive attitudes and that are in keeping with their values and beliefs. The less we know about something, the more indifferent we tend to be. Any speaker seeking a change in attitudes or behavior does well to remember this.
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9. Gauge Listener’s Feelings Toward the Occasion
“ Depending on the speech occasion, people bring different sets of expectations and emotions to it. The speaker who fails to anticipate such attitudes and expectations risks alienating audience members.”
Dan O’Hair “A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking,” pg. 36
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10. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Demographics are the statistical characteristics of a given population. Six such characteristics are typically considered in the analysis of speech audiences.
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Age. Each age group brings its own concerns, psychological drives and motivations. People of the same generation often share a familiarity with significant individuals, local and world events, noteworthy pop culture, and so forth.
Be aware of the age differences and develop points for all.

11. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
An understanding of and sensitivity to the ethnic and cultural composition of your listeners are key factors in delivering a successful – and ethical – speech. Some audience members may have a great deal in common with you. Others may be fluent in a language other than yours and must struggle to understand you. Some members of the audience may belong to a distinct co-culture, or social community, who perceptions and beliefs differ significantly from yours

12. Treat Your Listeners with Dignity
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Treat Your Listeners with Dignity
In any speaking situation, your foremost concern should be to treat your listeners with dignity and to act with integrity. You do this by adhering to certain ethical ground rules, or, in the words of ethicist Michael Josephson, “pillars of character.” These include being trustworthy, respectful, responsible and fair in our presentation. (See section 2)
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13. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status includes income, occupation and education. Knowing roughly where an audience falls in terms of these key variables can be critical in effectively targeting your message.

14. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
Socioeconomic status
Income
Income determines people’s experiences on many levels. It directly affects how they are housed, clothed, and fed, and it determines what they can afford. Income also affects whether we have good health insurance, travel and leisure activities. Given how pervasively income affects people’s life experiences, insight into this aspect of an audience’s makeup can be quite important.

15. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
Socioeconomic status
Income
Occupation
In most speech situations, the occupation of audience members is an important and easily identifiable demographic characteristic to uncover. The nature of people’s work has a lot to do with what interests them. Occupational interests are tied to other areas of social concern, like politics, the economy, education and social reform. Personal attitudes, beliefs, and goals are also closely tied to occupational standing.

16. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
Socioeconomic status
Income
Occupation
Education
Level of education strongly influences people’s ideas, perspectives, and range of abilities. If the audience is generally better educated than you, your speech may need to be more sophisticated. When speaking to a less educated audience, you may choose to clarify your points with more examples and illustrations.

17. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
Socioeconomic status
Income
Occupation
Education
Religion
The “Encyclopedia of American Religions” identifies more than 2,300 different religious groups in the United States, so don’t assume that everyone in your audience shares a common religious heritage. And don’t assume that members of the same religion tradition agree on all issues.
Divorce, abortion, same-sex unions, etc., can diversify the same group.

18. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
Socioeconomic status
Income
Occupation
Education
Religion
Political affiliation
Beware of making unwarranted assumptions about an audience’s political values and beliefs. Some like a lively debate on public issues, others shy away from it. Unless you have prior information about the audience’s political ideas, you won’t know where your listeners stand.

19. Adapt Your Message to Audience Demographics
Ethnic or cultural background
Socioeconomic status
Income
Occupation
Education
Religion
Political affiliation
Gender
Be wary about making generalizations based on gender. This includes avoiding sexist language and other gender stereotypes. Don’t oversimplify male and female. Strive for language that is inclusive of and respectful toward both sexes.

20. Consider Disability When Analyzing an Audience
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Consider Disability When Analyzing an Audience
One out of every five people in the United States has some sort of physical or mental disability; thus you must ensure that your speech reflects language that accords persons with disability dignity, respect and fairness.
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21. Adapt to Cultural Differences
Individualism versus collectivism
High uncertainty versus low uncertainty
High power distance versus low power distance
Masculine versus feminine
Audience members hold different cultural perspectives and styles of communicating that may not mesh with your own. This becomes apparent when attempts at humor fall flat on its face.
Be alert to differences in order to avoid ethnocentrism. To do this consider audience members’ cultural orientations.
Four broad cultural identifications have been identified that are significant across all cultures in varying degrees.
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Individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity versus femininity.

22. CHECKLIST: Reviewing Your Speech in the Light of Audience Demographics
Does your speech acknowledge potential differences in values and beliefs and address them sensitively?
Have you reviewed your topic in light of the age range and generational identity of your listeners? Do you use examples they will recognize and find relevant?
Have you avoided making judgments based on stereotypes?
Are your explanations and examples at a level that is appropriate to the audience’s sophistication and education?
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23. CHECKLIST: Reviewing Your Speech in the Light of Audience Demographics
Do you make any unwarranted assumptions about the audience’s political or religious values and beliefs?
Does your topic carry religious or political overtones that are likely to stir your listeners’ emotions in a negative way?
Is your speech free of generalizations based on gender?
Does your language reflect sensitivity toward people with disabilities?
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24. Seek Information through Surveys, Interviews and Published Sources
Conducting surveys and interviews of audience members and seeking out published information such as polls and company reports will help uncover critical demographic and psychological information about members of an audience. Often it takes just a few questions to get some idea about where audience members stand on each of the demographic factors.

25. Survey Audience Members
Questionnaire
Closed-ended questions
Fixed-alternative questions
Scale questions
Open-ended questions
Surveys can be as informal as a telephone poll of two audience members or as formal as the distribution of a written survey
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Questionnaire – a series of closed-ended, fixed-alternative, scale and open-ended questions.
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By using a mix of these questions you can draw a fairly clear picture of the backgrounds and attitudes of the members of your audience. Closed-ended questions are helpful in uncovering shared attitudes, experiences, and knowledge. Open-ended questions are useful for probing beliefs and opinions. They elicit more individual or personal information about the audience’s thoughts and feelings. They are also more time intensive than closed-ended questions
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26. Conduct Interviews Prepare questions for the interview
Word questions carefully
Create neutral questions
Avoid vague questions
Avoid leading questions
An interview is a face-to-face communication for the purpose of gathering information. Interviews can be conducted on-on-one or in a group.
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Prepare questions for the interview. Plan well in advance the questions you will ask.
Word questions carefully. The wording of a question is almost as critical as the information is seeks to uncover.
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27. Conduct Interviews Open interview carefully
Explain purpose of information
State a reasonable goal
Acknowledge interviewee
Establish time limit for interview and stick to it
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Open the interview carefully. Briefly summarize your topic and informational needs.
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Explain the purpose for which the information will be used.
State a reasonable goal, such as what you want to accomplish in the interview, and reach an agreement on it.
Acknowledge the interviewee, and express respect for his or her expertise.
Establish a time limit for the interview and stick to it.

28. Conduct Interviews Don’t end interview abruptly
Check to see you’ve covered the topic
Offer a brief, positive summary
Offer to send results to interviewee
Send a written thanks
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Don’t end the interview abruptly. Instead, offer to answer any questions the interviewee may have.
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Check that you’ve covered all the topics. For example, say “Does this cover everything?”
Briefly offer a positive summary of important things you learned in the interview.
Offer to send the result of the interview to the interviewee.
Send a written not of thanks.

29. Investigate Published Poll and Other Sources
As another source of information about audience members, consider consulting published opinion polls that report on trends in attitudes. Although the polls won’t specifically reflect your listener’s responses, they can provide insight into how a representative state, national or international sample feels about the same issue. Armed with this knowledge, you can then investigate your specific audience and use this polling data as supporting material. In addition, organizations publish all kinds of material on their missions, goals, operations, etc. Sources include Web sites, print brochures, newspaper and magazine articles, annual reports, industry guides and agency abstracts.

30. Assess the Speech Setting
Where will the speech take place?
How long am I expected to speak?
How many people will attend?
Will I need a microphone?
How will any projecting equipment I plan to use in my speech, such as an LCD projector, speech function in the space?
As important as analyzing the audience is assessing and then preparing for the setting in which you will give your speech
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31. Assess the Speech Setting
Where will I stand or sit in relation to the audience?
Will I be able to interact with the listeners?
Who else will be speaking?
Are there special events or circumstances of concern to my audience that I should acknowledge?
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