5.2: Categories of Audience Analysis
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No matter which of the above inquiry methods you choose to do your audience analysis, you will, at some point, need to direct your attention to the five “categories” of audience analysis.
Let’s now examine these categories and understand the variables and constraints you should use to estimate your audience’s information requirements.
Situational Analysis
The situational audience analysis category considers the situation for which your audience is gathered. This category is primarily concerned with why your audience is assembled in the first place (Caernarven-Smith, 1983). Are they willingly gathered to hear you speak? Have your audience members paid to hear you? Or, are your audience members literally “speech captives” who have somehow been socially or systematically coerced into hearing you?
These factors are decisively important because they place a major responsibility upon you as a speaker. The entire tone and agenda of your speech rests largely upon whether or not your audience even wants to hear from you.
Many audiences are considered captive audiences in that they are, for whatever reason, required to be present. While they must physically be present, it is your job as a speaker to keep them mentally present!
In stark contrast, a voluntary audience is willingly assembled to listen to a given message. As a rule, these audiences are much easier to address because they are interested in hearing the speech. With this type of audience, your job is to make sure they leave satisfied and informed.
Demographic Analysis
The second category of audience analysis is demography. As mentioned before, demographics are literally a classification of the characteristics of the people. Whenever addressing an audience, it is generally a good idea to know about its age, gender/sex, major, year in school, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, income levels, et cetera. There are two steps in doing an accurate demographic analysis: gathering demographic data and interpreting this data (Benjamin, 1969).
Consider for a moment how valuable it would be to you as a public speaker to know that your audience will be mostly female, between the ages of 25 and 40, mostly married, and Caucasian. Would this change your message to fit this demographic? Or would you keep your message the same, no matter the audience you were addressing? Chances are you would be more inclined to talk to issues bearing upon those gender, age, and race qualities.
Frankly, the smart speaker would shift his or her message to adapt to the audience. And, simply, that’s the purpose of doing demographics: to embed within your message the acceptable parameters of your audience’s range of needs.
Psychological Analysis
Unless your selected speech topic is a complete mystery to your audience, your listeners will already hold “attitudes, beliefs, and values” toward the ideas you will inevitably present. As a result, it is always important to know where your audience stands on the issues you plan to address ahead of time.
The best way to accomplish this is to sample your audience with a quick questionnaire or survey prior to the event. This is known as the third category of audience analysis, or psychological description.
Attitudes
In basic terms, attitudes are likes and dislikes. 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 (Jastrow, 1918). Attitudes come in different forms. Attitudes can be as simple as saying “I like college” or “I don’t like pizza.” You are very likely to see an attitude present itself when someone says that they are “pro” or “anti” something. You may have a positive attitude toward the welfare system, or a negative attitudes.
Above all else, attitudes are learned and not necessarily enduring. Attitudes can change, and sometimes do, whereas beliefs and values do not shift as easily.
Beliefs
Beliefs are principles (Bem, 1970) or assumptions about the universe. They include statements we make regarding the validity of ideas (what is true or false). Beliefs are more durable than attitudes because beliefs are hinged to ideals and not issues.
For example, you may believe in the principle: “what goes around comes around.” If you do, you believe in the notion of karma. And so, you may align your behaviors to be consistent with this belief philosophy. You do not engage in unethical or negative behavior because you believe that it will “come back” to you. Likewise, you may try to exude behaviors that are ethical and positive because you wish for this behavior to return, in kind. You may not think this at all, and believe quite the opposite. Either way, there is a belief in operation driving what you think. In many instances, particularly in persuasion, we attempt to convince people to change beliefs by researching to see if the belief can be proved. Some examples of beliefs are located in Table \(\PageIndex{1}\).
|
Examples of Beliefs |
Examples of Beliefs |
|---|---|
|
The world was created by God. |
Smoking does not cause cancer. |
|
Marijuana is an addictive gateway drug. |
Only high-risk groups acquire HIV. |
|
Ghosts are all around us. |
Evolution is fact, not fiction. |
|
Smoking causes cancer. |
Marijuana is neither addictive or harmful. |
|
Anyone can acquire HIV. |
Ghosts are products of our imagination. |
Values
A value, on the other hand, is an enduring belief that regulates our attitudes (Rokeach, 1968). Values are the core principles driving our behavior. If you probe into someone’s attitudes and beliefs far enough, you will inevitably find an underlying value. Importantly, you should also know that we structure our values in accordance to our own value hierarchy, or mental schema of values placed in order of their relative individual importance. Each of us has our own values that we subscribe to and a value hierarchy that we use to navigate the issues of the world. We look at the world through our own lens of what we believe is good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral, and ethical or unethical. That is why values are the most difficult to change.
Values aren’t buses… They’re not supposed to get you anywhere. They’re supposed to define who you are.
~ Jennifer Crusie
Multicultural Analysis
Demography looks at issues of race and ethnicity in a basic sense. However, in our increasingly diverse society, it is worthy to pay particular attention to the issue of speaking to a multicultural audience. Odds are that any real world audience that you encounter will have an underlying multicultural dimension.
As a speaker, you need to recognize that the perspective you have on any given topic may not necessarily be shared by all of the members of your audience (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2005). Therefore, it is imperative that you become a culturally effective speaker. Culturally effective speakers develop the capacity to appreciate other cultures and acquire the necessary skills to speak effectively to people with diverse ethnic backgrounds. Keep these factors in mind when writing a speech for a diverse audience: language, cognition, ethnocentricity, values, and communication styles.
Language
Many people speak different languages; so if you are translating words, do not use slang or jargon, which can be confusing. You could add a visual aid (a poster, a picture, a PowerPoint slide or two), which would show your audience what you mean – which instantly translates into the audience member’s mind.
Cognition
Realize that different cultures have different cultural- cognitive processes, or ways of looking at the very concept of logic itself. Accordingly, gauge your audience as to their diverse ways of thinking and be sensitive to these differing logics.
Ethnocentricity
Remember that in many cases you will be appealing to people from other cultures. Do not assume that your culture is dominant or better than other cultures. That assumption is called ethnocentrism, and ethnocentric viewpoints have the tendency to drive a wedge between you and your audience
Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.
~ Rumi
Values
Not only do individuals have value systems of their own, but societies promote value systems, as well. Keep in mind the fact that you will be appealing to value hierarchies that are socially-laden, as well as those that are individually-borne.
Communication Styles
While you are trying to balance these language, cognition, cultural, and value issues, you should also recognize that some cultures prefer a more animated delivery style than do others. The intelligent speaker will understand this, and adapt his or her verbal and nonverbal delivery accordingly.
Interest and Knowledge Analysis
Finally, if the goal of your speech is to deliver a unique and stirring presentation (and it should be), you need to know ahead of time if your audience is interested in what you have to say, and has any prior knowledge about your topic.
You don’t want to give a speech that your audience already knows a lot about. So, your job here is to “test” your topic by sampling your audience for their topic interest and topic knowledge. Defined, topic interest is the significance of the topic to a given audience; often related to the uniqueness of a speaker’s topic. Likewise, topic knowledge is the general amount of information that the audience possesses on a given topic. These are not mere definitions listed for the sake of argument; these are essential analytical components of effective speech construction.
Unlike multicultural audience analysis, evaluating your audience’s topic interest and topic knowledge is a fairly simple task. One can do this through informal question and answer dialogue, or through an actual survey. Either way, it is best to have some information, rather than none at all.
Anyone who teaches me deserves my respect, honoring and attention.
~ Sonia Rumzi