Explain Three Types of Audience Analysis

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As mentioned earlier, there are three prominent types of audience analysis, which are

1.       Demographic Analysis

2.       Psychographic Analysis

3.       Situational Analysis 

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1.       Demographics Analysis

Demographic information includes factors such as gender, age range, marital status, race and ethnicity, 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 come to hear you.

Whatever method you use to gather demographics, exercise respect from the outset. For instance, if you are collecting information about whether audience members have been assaulted, be aware that not everyone will want to answer your questions. You cannot require them to do so, and you may not make assumptions about their reluctance to discuss the topic. You must allow them their privacy. 

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Other examples under the demographic analysis, in terms of culture. In which, even in the same culture, women and men have different experiences based on their gender. For instance, women are often kept out of jobs that are thought to be better suited for men. Such as Engineering. In some cultures, engineering is perceived as a job for men.

Religions are also very different: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and many more. Even within Christianity, there are Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodox (Greek and Russian), and many Protestant denominations. In which, Yes they can be in a same religion, but yet they may have different views and belief in that religion.

In the demographic analysis, the level and type of education are also essential factors. An airplane mechanic gets a very different education and training than an accountant, musician, or software engineer. Fraternities and sororities, sports teams, campus organizations, political parties, volunteer work, and cultural communities all shape how we see the world. Lastly, their jobs affect people’s ideas and interests because most appointments are misunderstood in many ways.

From the examples/ situation given, you can understand that by doing demographic audience analysis, you can find out a lot about your audience and by that you can ensure more effective speech could delivered.

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2.       Psychographic Analysis

Different from Demographic Analysis, Psychographic analysis serves information, which includes such things as values, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs.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.

It is important to recognize that, as "Demographic Analysis" is fairly straightforward and verifiable, psychographic information is much less clear-cut. Two different people who both say they believe in equal educational opportunity 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.”

Understanding our audience from psychographic perspectives involves acknowledging that people inherit some 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.

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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.

Regardless of their views or perceptions as a speaker, your concern should still 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.

Before you get any more confused to differentiate these two types of analysis, study the diagram below to comprehend better.

Demographics Analysis is more on gender, age, marital status even ethic background. Whereas, Psychographics Analysis looks into someone’s perception, interest, belief, attitudes even personality traits.

Now that, we have one more type of analysis to discover, which is Situational Analysis.

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3.       Situational Analysis

As what the name of analysis, Situational Audience Analysis is “situation” based analysis. In which, it focuses on characteristics related to the specific speaking situation. The situational audience analysis can be divided into two main questions:

1.       How many people came to hear my speech 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? Does my topic is related to them personally?

2.       What is the physical environment of the speaking situation? What is the size of the audience, layout of the room, existence of a podium or a microphone, and availability of digital media for visual aids? Are there any distractions, such as traffic noise?

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Under situational analysis, there some aspects you can look into,

1.       Audience Size

For instance, if you are giving your speech in a classroom, your audience is likely to consist of twenty to thirty listeners. This audience size gives you the latitude to be relatively informal within the bounds of good judgment. It isn’t too difficult to let each audience member feel as though you’re speaking to him or her.

Differently, if you have larger audiences, it’s more difficult to reach out to each listener, and your speech will tend to be more formal, staying more strictly within its careful outline. However, you still can engage with the audience by preparing visual or audio material that reaches the people sitting at the back of the room to make sure no one is left behind.

2.       Occasion

Some of the most successful speeches benefit from situational analysis to identify audience concerns related to the occasion. Awards ceremonies, conventions and conferences, holidays, and other celebrations are some of the examples under this type of analysis. 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 we wouldn’t be surprised to find at least a little resentment from listeners who feel deserving but were overlooked.

3.       Voluntariness of Audience

Consider for a moment when you have been called to answer a question from your lecture. Were you truly happy to listen to the speaker, in all honesty? Some might say “yes,” but usually most would rather be doing something else with their time. This is an important factor to keep in mind when preparing your speech: some people simply do not want to listen to a speech they believe is compulsory.

The situation described above explains what voluntariness of audience is.  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. To visualize how this works, reflect upon the last speech, concert, or show you’ve chosen to attend. While the event may or may not have lived up to your overall expectations, the very fact that you freely went to the occasion speaks volumes about your predisposition to listen to—and perhaps even be persuaded by—the information being presented.

Hence, we can conclude that 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.