5Adapting to Your

Audience

Audience Analysis

Obtaining and evaluating information about your audience in order to anticipate their needs and interests and design a strategy to respond to them

What is an Audience?

The audience-speaker connection Classroom audiences

Adapting to a Diverse Audience

Target audience Meeting the challenges of audience

diversity Techniques for speaking to diverse

audiences• Search for commonalities• Establish credibility• Include supporting materials that resonate• Use language that appeals to all members• Attend to all segments of your audience

Using Demographic Data

Demographics – the ways in which populations can be divided into smaller groups according to key characteristics

Gathering demographic data

Using Psychographic Information

Audience standpoints Audience values Audience attitudes Audience beliefs Gathering psychographic data

Developing an Audience Research Questionnaire

Asking closed-ended questions Asking open-ended questions Combining question types Distributing your questionnaire Questionnaires for non-classroom

audiences

Using Audience Research Data in Your Speech

Types of audience data• Summary statistics• Direct quotes

Referring to audience data in your speech

Adapting to the Setting

The location The occasion

• Voluntary audiences

• Captive audiences The time

Credibility

An audience’s perception of a speaker’s competence, trustworthiness, dynamism, and sociability

Developing Credibility with Your Audience

Competence Trustworthiness Dynamism Sociability

Relevant Websites

Audience analysis Audience analysis questionnaire