5.3: Three Types of Audience Analysis

Learning Objectives

1. Understand how to gather and use demographic information.
2. Understand how to gather and use psychographic information.
3. Understand how to gather and use situational information.

While audience analysis does not guarantee against errors in judgment, it will help you make good choices in topic, language, style of presentation, and other aspects of your speech. The more you know about your audience, the better you can serve their interests and needs. There are certainly limits to what we can learn through information collection, and we need to acknowledge that before making assumptions, but knowing how to gather and use information through audience analysis is an essential skill for successful speakers.

Demographic Analysis

A demographic analysis requires gathering and analyzing information on factors such as gender, age range, marital status, race and ethnicity, political leanings, locality, and socioeconomic status. In your public speaking class, you probably already know how many students are male and female, their approximate ages, and so forth. But how can you assess the demographics of an audience ahead of time if you have had no previous contact with them? In many cases, you can ask the person or organization that has invited you to speak; it’s likely that they can tell you a lot about the demographics of the people who are expected to be present. If you are speaking to the general public, you can gather data on the local population from government websites such as media income and age, racial demographics, percent of residents who own versus rent their home, etc. The information may not be perfect or comprehensive, but it will give you some idea of the people in the area. If you have time for advance planning, you might be able to conduct a survey to gather specific information from the attendees themselves.

Whatever method you use to gather demographics, it’s crucial to exercise respect from the outset. For instance, if you are collecting information about sexual activity/orientation, divorce, political opinions, trauma/abuse, or other sensitive topics, be aware that not everyone will want to answer your questions. You can’t require them to do so, and you may not make assumptions about their reluctance to discuss the topic. You must allow them their privacy.

Demographic information can provide broad indicators about a group but it can also lead a speaker to draw inaccurate conclusions about the audience or reduce them to stereotypes based on one or two categories. To avoid this, it’s important to use the information to get a sense of the people likely to be listening to your speech while also acknowledging the myriad differences within and across all identity categories.

Here are some demographic categories, examples of how they could be helpful, and stereotypes to avoid.

Age

Age allows a speaker to assess the life stage, shared history, or cultural touchstones the audience might have in common. Are they grandparents who remember The Beatles and Vietnam or Gen Xers who grew up with Star Wars in the 1970s and 80s? Are they in their 20s and 30s and perhaps thinking about careers, homeownership, or starting a family, or are they soon-to-be empty-nesters with too much space? However, not everyone shares the same life trajectory or experiences the same events the same way. Some first-time parents are still teenagers while others are in their 40s.

Gender

Society teaches us how to navigate the world based on our gender identity, from how we navigate public space to which careers we may have been steered toward, to how we interact with each other. Many occupations still tend to be highly gendered with leadership positions still dominated by men (doctor, CEO, pilot, principal) and subordinate positions held by women (nurse, secretary, flight attendant, teacher). As children, though, boys typically face harsher reprisal for breaking even the most minor gender norms, such as admitting they enjoy dancing or books with female main characters, which teaches them to keep their thoughts and interests to themselves for fear of saying or doing something that could be constructed as feminine by their peers. In heterosexual relationships, women often feel more social pressure to be the primary caregiver while stay-at-home-dads encounter stigma for freeloading off their wives. Therefore, using gendered language to refer to specific roles, jobs, or hobbies (e.g., saying maternity leave instead of parental leave; she takes ballet and he plays soccer) could perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Furthermore, gender norms are also being increasingly challenged as we move further into the 21^st century – and in fact, the concept of gender as a socially constructed spectrum rather than a natural binary is gaining wider acceptance. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge that our gender does not pre-determine our interests or abilities.

Culture

In past generations, Americans often used the metaphor of a “melting pot” to symbolize the assimilation of immigrants from various countries and cultures into a unified, harmonious “American people.” Today, we are aware of the limitations in that metaphor, and have largely replaced it with a multiculturalist view that describes the American fabric as a “patchwork” or a “mosaic.” We know that people who immigrate do not abandon their cultures of origin to conform to a standard American identity. In fact, cultural continuity is now viewed as a healthy source of identity, and elements of various cultures that have been adopted into mainstream society have become staples of mainstream food and society. Further, cultural membership is also not visibly obvious, despite stereotypes to the contrary. Physical signifiers such as skin tone, clothing, hairstyle, or even language are superficial, imprecise, and rooted in stereotypes. As a speaker, it is important to trust that people in your audience hail from different cultural backgrounds, but do not assume you know what the background might be. Allow them to share with you (or not) whether they identify as part of a particular ethnic or cultural group. Differences make each group interesting and are important sources of knowledge, perspectives, and creativity.

Religion

There is wide variability in religion as well. Although a majority of American still identify with a major religion such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and others, the number of unaffiliated, atheist, or agnostic people has been growing in recent decades. Christianity and its various denominations – Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, Evangelical, etc. – remains the most common religious affiliation, but since 2007, the percent of the population who identifies as Christian has dropped from 78% to 63% as of 2022 (Pew Research Center, 2022). Even within a given religion, a great deal of diversity can be found. For instance, some people are devoutly religious and attend services regularly while others attend occasionally or not at all but still subscribe to major tenets of the faith. Religion can also be tied to cultural identity, with some people observing Easter, Yom Kippur, or Eid al-Fitr out of sense of tradition or nostalgia rather than spirituality. The dimensions of diversity in the religion demographic are almost endless, and they are not limited by denomination. Yet, even with these multiple facets, religion is still a meaningful demographic lens. It can be an indicator of probable patterns in family relationships, family size, and moral attitudes.

Group Membership

Fraternities and sororities, sports teams, campus organizations, political parties, volunteerism, and cultural communities all have their own set of values, goals, principles, and codes of ethics, and they provide people with ways of understanding the world as it is and as we think it should be. For instance, Scouting BSA, formerly the Boy Scouts, emphasizes duty, obedience, strength, and morality, while the Girl Scouts focuses on kindness, fairness, respect, and stewardship. All are admirable and honorable traits, but they are intentionally not identical as each group want to promote a slightly different set of values to its members. Those differences will therefore potentially impact how an audience of former Boy or Girl Scouts respond to a particular topic.

Because public speaking audiences are often attending a speaking event as part of a group affiliation, this demographic category can be a useful and often easy way to access a facet of audience analysis. The more you know about the associations of your audience members, the better prepared you will be to tailor your speech to their interests, expectations, and needs.

Education

Higher education is often credited with providing a “general education” that ensures exposure to a broad array of ideas and subjects, along with a narrow focus on a major in preparation for a career in a specific field. The trades often provide highly technical job training but less general education. And post-graduate work such as law, medical, or graduate school, allows advanced and/or specialized study in a particular field. However, making assumptions about a person or group based whether or not they went to college is no less rooted in stereotypes than assumptions based on race or gender. As with other categories, an audience is likely to include people with various educational backgrounds unless you are speaking to a very specific group such as psychiatrists, lawyers, accountants – or college students.

Occupation

Occupation can give you a sense of what information your audience might or might not know. Doctors and nurses will understand medical jargon that others might not. Farmers might laugh at a joke about the weather that investment bankers don’t get. Trade workers are more likely to belong to a union than retail workers. But there are also many misconceptions about most occupations. For instance, many people believe that teachers work an eight- hour day and have summers off. But the truth is they take work home with them during evenings and weekends, and in the summer, they may teach summer school or take courses to keep up with new developments in their fields. Learning about those occupational realities is important in avoiding wrong assumptions and stereotypes.

Psychographic Analysis

Psychographic analysis involves learning about such things as values, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs, which often cannot be extrapolated from demographic information. Authors Grice and Skinner present a model in which values are the basis for beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Grice & Skinner, 2009). They said, “A value expresses a judgment of what is desirable and undesirable, right and wrong, or good and evil. Values are usually stated in the form of a word or phrase. For example, most of us probably share the values of equality, freedom, honesty, fairness, justice, good health, and family. These values compose the principles or standards we use to judge and develop our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.” People often inherit values from their family upbringing, cultural influences, and life experiences. The extent to which someone values family loyalty and obedience to parents, thrift, humility, and work may be determined by these influences more than by individual choice.

It is important to recognize that, while demographic information is fairly straightforward and verifiable, psychographic information is much less clear-cut. Two people of the same age, religion, and occupation may both say they believe in equal educational opportunity but may have very different interpretations of what “equal opportunity” means. People who say they don’t buy junk food may have very different standards for what specific kinds of foods are considered “junk food.”

Psychographic analysis can reveal preexisting notions that limit your audience’s frame of reference. By knowing about such notions ahead of time, you can address them in your speech. Audiences are likely to have two basic kinds of preexisting notions: those about the topic and those about the speaker.

Preexisting Notions about Your Topic

Many things are a great deal more complex than we realize. Media stereotypes often contribute to our oversimplifications. For instance, poverty one of your authors, teaching public speaking in the past decade, was surprised to hear a student claim that “the hippies meant well, but they did it wrong.” Aside from the question of the “it” that was done wrong, there was a question about how little the student actually knew about the diverse hippy cultures and their aspirations. The student seemed unaware that some of “the hippies” were the forebears of such things as organic bakeries, natural food co-ops, urban gardens, recycling, alternative energy, wellness, and other arguably positive developments.

It’s important to know your audience in order to make a rational judgment about how their views of your topic might be shaped. In speaking to an audience that might have differing definitions, you should take care to define your terms in a clear, honest way.

At the opposite end from oversimplification is the level of sophistication your audience might embody. Your audience analysis should include factors that reveal it. Suppose you are speaking about trends in civil rights in the United States. You cannot pretend that advancement of civil rights is virtually complete nor can you claim that no progress has been made. It is likely that in a college classroom, the audience will know that although much progress has been made, there are still pockets of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. When you speak to an audience that is cognitively complex, your strategy must be different from one you would use for an audience that is less educated in the topic. With a cognitively complex audience, you must acknowledge the overall complexity while stating that your focus will be on only one dimension. With an audience that’s uninformed about your topic, that strategy in a persuasive speech could confuse them; they might well prefer a black-and-white message with no gray areas. You must decide whether it is ethical to represent your topic this way.

When you prepare to do your audience analysis, include questions that reveal how much your audience already knows about your topic. Try to ascertain the existence of stereotyped, oversimplified, or prejudiced attitudes about it. This could make a difference in your choice of topic or in your approach to the audience and topic.

Preexisting Notions about You

People form opinions readily. For instance, students form impressions of teachers the moment they walk into the classroom on the first day. They get an immediate impression of their teacher’s age, competence, and attitude simply from appearance and nonverbal behavior. In addition, many have heard the opinions of previous students who were in the class.

The same will be true for you when you walk into a speaking environment. But it’s not always easy to get honest feedback about others’ impressions of you, especially if your audience is unfamiliar. You might be aware that your friends think of you as a jock, or a nature lover, or as someone who is too uptight, and so on. But it’s harder to assess someone’s first impression of you in a formal, short-term setting like a meeting or lecture. Therefore, your concern should be serving your audience’s needs and interests, not debunking their opinions of you or managing your image. In order to help them be receptive, you address their interests directly, and make sure they get an interesting, ethical speech.

Situational Analysis

The next type of analysis is called the situational audience analysis because it focuses on characteristics related to a specific topic, issue, event, occasion, movement, or group or people. The situational audience analysis can be divided into two main questions:

1. How many people are in the audience, and why are they here? What events, concerns, and needs motivated them to come? What is their interest level, and what else might be competing for their attention?
2. What is the physical environment of the speaking situation? What is the size and layout of the room? Is there a podium, microphone, and digital media for visual aids? Is there room to walk around? Are there any distractions such as traffic noise? Are people seated at round tables or in rows of chairs? Is it stadium seating or flat? How are the acoustics?

Occasion

There are many occasions for speeches. Awards ceremonies, conventions and conferences, holidays, and other celebrations are some examples. However, there are also less joyful reasons for a speech, such as funerals, disasters, and the delivery of bad news. As always, there are likely to be mixed reactions. For instance, award ceremonies are good for community and institutional morale, but some listeners who feel deserving but were overlooked might be resentful. Likewise, a speech announcing bad news is likely to cause some listeners to feel grateful the bad news wasn’t even worse. If your speech is to deliver bad news, it’s important to be honest but also to avoid traumatizing your audience. For instance, a condominium board member speaking to a residents after the building was damaged by a hurricane will need to provide accurate data about the extent of the damage and the anticipated cost and time required for repairs. At the same time, it would be needlessly upsetting to launch into a graphic description of injuries suffered by people, animals, and property in neighboring areas not connected to the condominium complex.

Some of the most successful speeches benefit from situational analysis to identify audience concerns related to the occasion. For example, when the president of the United States gives the annual State of the Union address, the occasion calls for commenting on the condition of the nation and outlining the legislative agenda for the coming year. The speech could be a formality that would interest only “policy wonks,” but with a good situational audience analysis, it could be a popular event reinforcing the connection between the president and the American people. In January 2011, knowing that the United States’ economy was slowly recovering and that jobless rates were still very high, President Barack Obama and his staff knew that the focus of the speech had to be on jobs. Similarly, in January 2003, President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech focused on the “war on terror” and his reasons justifying the invasion of Iraq. If you look at the history of State of the Union Addresses, you’ll often find that the speeches are tailored to the political, social, and economic situations facing the United States at those times.

Voluntariness of Audience

A voluntary audience gathers because they want to hear the speech, attend the event, or participate in an event. A classroom audience, in contrast, is likely to be a captive audience. Captive audiences are required to be present or feel obligated to do so. Given the limited choices perceived, a captive audience might give only grudging attention. Even when there’s an element of choice, the likely consequences of nonattendance will keep audience members from leaving. The audience’s relative perception of choice increases the importance of holding their interest.

Whether or not the audience members chose to be present, you want them to be interested in what you have to say. Almost any audience will be interested in a topic that pertains directly to them. However, your audience might also be receptive to topics that are indirectly or potentially pertinent to their lives. This means that if you choose a topic such as advances in the treatment of spinal cord injury or advances in green technology, you should do your best to show how these topics are potentially relevant to their lives or careers.

However, there are some topics that appeal to audience curiosity even when it seems there’s little chance of direct pertinence. For instance, topics such as Blackbeard the pirate or ceremonial tattoos among the Maori might pique the interests of various audiences. Depending on the instructions you get from your instructor, you can consider building an interesting message about something outside the daily foci of our attention.

Physical Setting

The physical setting can make or break even the best speeches, so it is important to exercise as much control as you can over it. In your classroom, conditions might not be ideal, but at least the setting is familiar. Still, you know your classroom from the perspective of an audience member, not a speaker standing in the front—which is why you should seek out any opportunity to rehearse your speech during a minute when the room is empty. If you will be giving your presentation somewhere else, it is a good idea to visit the venue ahead of time if at all possible and make note of any factors that will affect how you present your speech. In any case, be sure to arrive well in advance of your speaking time so that you will have time to check that the microphone works, to test out any visual aids, and to request any needed adjustments in lighting, room ventilation, or other factors to eliminate distractions and make your audience more comfortable.

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