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5.5: Activities and Glossary

  • Page ID
    8984
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    Review Questions

    1. Why is it important to conduct an audience analysis prior to developing your speech?
    2. What is the purpose of performing a demographics survey?
    3. Why is audience analysis by direct observation the most simple of the three paradigms?
    4. What are some the problems a speaker faces when delivering an unacquainted-audience presentation?
    5. Under what circumstances would a speaker make inferences about an audience during the course of an audience analysis?
    6. What is a variable, and how is it used in data sampling?
    7. Why are statistics considered to be a form of quantitative analysis and not qualitative analysis?
    8. How does conducting a value hierarchy help the speaker when developing a speech?
    9. What value does performing a Likert-type testing of attitudes give the speaker?
    10. Which of the Five Categories of Audience Analysis is the most effective, and why do you think that?
    11. What are the differences between beliefs, attitudes, and values?
    12. What challenges does a speaker face when delivering a speech to a multicultural audience?

    Activities

    1. If you know who your audience will be prior to speaking, try performing a demographic analysis. You may want to find out data, such as age, group affiliation, sex, socio-economic status, marital status, etc. Once you’ve done that, see if any of that information can impact any aspects of your speech. If it does, then determine how and why it impacts your speech.

    2. Another survey to conduct is an attitudinal survey. If you are delivering a persuasive speech, you’ll want to know what your audience thinks about your topic. Audience members who have opinions about things generally have a self-interest in it; that is why they are interested in what you have to say. Perform a Likerttype survey analysis to help you determine how best to create your speech.

    3. As you know, a person’s values are the most difficult for any speaker to change. You can perform a values survey to determine how difficult it will be to change the minds of your audience. Every persuasive speech addresses some value or values. Take a position, such as “consuming horse meat as an alternative to beef,” and ask potential audience members how they feel about eating horse meat – why and why not. By conducting a hypothetical survey you begin to understand how to create an effective survey and why it is so important to the speaker to conduct.

    Glossary

    Attitude

    An attitude is a learned disposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a person, an object, an idea, or an event.

    Audience Analysis

    A speaker analyzes an audience for demographics, dispositions and knowledge of the topic.

    Beliefs

    Beliefs are principles and are more durable than attitudes because beliefs are hinged to ideals and not issues.

    Cognitive Dissonance

    The psychological discomfort felt when a person is presented with two competing ideas or pieces of evidence.

    Demographics

    Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population.

    Demographic Characteristics

    Demographic characteristics are facts about the make-up of a population.

    Demography

    Demographics are literally a classification of the characteristics of the people.

    Inference

    Making an inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.

    Ordered Category

    An ordered category is a condition of logical or comprehensible arrangement among the separate elements of a group.

    Paradigm

    A paradigm is a pattern that describes distinct concepts or thoughts in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context.

    Psychological Description

    A psychological description is a description of the audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values.

    Quantitative Analysis

    A quantitative analysis is the process of determining the value of a variable by examining its numerical, measurable characteristics.

    Statistics

    Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data.

    Unacquainted-Audience Presentation

    An unacquainted-audience presentation is a speech when you are completely unaware of your audience’s characteristics.

    Uniqueness

    Uniqueness occurs when a topic rises to the level of being exceptional in interest and knowledge to a given audience.

    Variable

    A variable is a characteristic of a unit being observed that may assume more than one of a set of values to which a numerical measure or a category from a classification can be assigned.

    Value

    A value is a guiding belief that regulates our attitudes. Value Hierarchy A value hierarchy is a person’s value structure placed in relationship to a given value set.


    This page titled 5.5: Activities and Glossary is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Peter Decaro@University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Tyrone Adams@University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Bonnie Jefferis@St. Petersburg College, & Bonnie Jefferis@St. Petersburg College (Public Speaking Project) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.