Real Communication An Introduction

Chapter 12  Preparing and Researching Presentations 343

Understanding demographics and
psychographics can lead speakers to
topics that will be of interest and will
carry meaning for specific audiences.
For example, one of the most easily
quantifiable and useful demographic
statistics to consider is the age range
of your audience. If you have a good
sense of how old most of your audience
members are, you’ll be able to choose
a topic that is relevant to concerns of
their generation and ensure that the
examples and anecdotes you use in your
speech will resonate with the age groups
you are addressing.
As we learned in Chapter 5, some
audience characteristics will be more
salient—or significant—in some speaking situations than in others. For exam-
ple, if your audience members are mostly Latina women in their fifties who
have survived breast cancer, their status as survivors is not likely to be salient
if you are informing them about the importance of maximizing their annual
contributions to their 401(k) plans before retiring in the next fifteen years. But
if you are persuading a group to contribute money to the American Cancer
Society in order to support new research campaigns, their experience fighting
cancer should be firmly in your mind as you develop and deliver your speech.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “How can I possibly know all of the
demographics and psychographics of my audience members?” You’re right, of
course. You can’t necessarily know that the woman who sits three rows back
on the left side of the classroom is an engineering major from a Lithuanian,
middle-class family with a part-time job who enjoys tending her virtual garden
on Farmville and buys organic produce. But you can look for some general traits
and trends. For example, most school Web sites make data available on fac-
tors like age, race, gender, and religion and often provide information on the
percentage of students receiving financial aid, the number of students living on
campus versus those who commute, full-time versus part-time students, and
so on. You can also pay attention to general opinion polls on your proposed
topic or consider the types of topics your classmates discuss in class or on social
media sites.
There are some limitations of demographic and psychographic informa-
tion that deserve mention here. Sometimes speakers—including politicians and
advertisers—mistakenly apply stereotypes to demographic groups or overgener-
alize about common opinions and beliefs of group members. And, in some cases,
the results of demographic and psychographic data collection can be flawed or
even downright wrong (Sprague, Stuart, & Bodary, 2010). Because of this, it’s
important to be mindful in the way you use this information. For example,
your class may be 75 percent Catholic, but that doesn’t automatically mean that
they’ll be interested in a speech related to the Church. Additionally, they may
not agree with the official positions of the Church (for example, a majority of
Catholics favor birth control and a very large percentage of them practice it).

THE BANE of a school

presenter’s existence?

Fidgety kids who would much

rather poke their neighbors

than pay attention. © Jeff

Greenberg/Alamy

Have you ever found yourself

feeling disconnected from

a speaker, be it a course

instructor or a politician,

because he or she failed to

consider your age, gender,

interests, or lifestyle? Con-

versely, have you ever found

a speaker particularly effec-

tive because he or she did

consider such factors?

AND YOU?