In-Class Audience Analysis
Situational and Demographic
On an upcoming day, you will conduct a thorough audience analysis for your upcoming persuasive speech. On that day, you will need to have the proper number of copies of your analysis to distribute to each classmate, and one additional copy to give to the instructor.
Procedure
- Have a topic for your persuasive speech in mind
- Read Chapter 5 "Analyzing Your Audience" paying closest attention to "Audience disposition towards the topic" in the chapter discussion on "Situational Audience Analysis."
- Think carefully about what you need to find out from your analysis with consideration of your topic and your audience.
- Some good considerations might be:
- How much does your audience know about your topic?
- How much do they care about your topic?
- Do they see it as significant?
- Do they understand the nature of the "problem"?
- How much do they know about your proposed "plan"?
- How might they view your plan as "impractical"?
- What are their concerns about your "plan"?
- Compose 3 to 5 fixed-alternative questions.
- Compose 3 to 5 scale questions.
- You may use only 1 or two open-ended questions.
- To save copying costs, feel free to have 2 surveys per sheet of paper (2-up)
Remember, you should ask the kinds of questions that allow you to tailor your persuasion to your audience. It is especially important to find out their worries, concerns and negative dispositions towards your topic. This will allow you to narrow your research to find supporting materials to ally those concerns.
A few other considerations:
DO NOT ASK FOR RESPONDENT'S NAMES!!!
Fixed-alternative questions are easily answered and can give you quick demographics (if particular demographics are important to your topic).
Use true scale questions to get to the strength of your audience's feelings.
How strongly to you agree that....?
Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly
Disagree Agree
|--------------|------------|--------------|------------|
By the way, this is not a scale question:
How many times have you.....?
___1 ____5 ____7 ____10
It is a Fixed-alternative disguised as a scale question, with four fixed-alternatives. A scale question always includes a scale:
How many times have you.....?
1 5 10 15 20
|--------|--------|--------|-------|