Audience Analysis

That a presentation is easier to deliver than a speech certainly does suggest that we should choose to present whenever we have a choice, but ease of delivery does not imply that a presentation requires less preparation than a speech. In fact, because of the need for transparencies or Powerpoint slides, a good presentation usually requires more time for preparation than a comparable speech. Careful presentation preparation requires a number of key steps audience analysis, subject selection, elements of a presentation, preparation process, and transparency design and preparation. 

The best presentations come from serious consideration of audience. Experienced writers and speakers have a gut feel for their audiences and constantly adjust to audience needs, but the less experienced communicator has less of a feel and has to give more consideration to the approach chosen. To aid this process, it is helpful to prepare a short audience brief to help guide presentation planning for a particular audience. 

In preparing the brief, there are three audience characteristics to keep in mind  

Patience may be a virtue, but in business, time is money many of your 

CEO (chief executive office) with nine appointments before lunch and a plane 

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Considering tliese aspects of your audience will help you design yom presentation appropriately. Table 6.1 summarizes the connections between audience characteristics and presentation consequences. Although this section has been fairly clinical in dissecting the components of audience analysis, the more appropriate mechanism for considering a particular audience is the holistic preparation of an audience brief. 

This chapter has examined key aspects of making effective business presentations. The key notion is to present—to give a talk supported by visual aids—not speak. Busy businesspeople make a presentation more often than they give a speech, and you should do likewise. We ve also considered the importance of audience analysis and subject selection and have enumerated some of the important elements of a typical presentation. 

Audience Analysis. This Staple of all commnnication goes beyond merely thinking abont the occupations or titles of yonr readers/listeners. At some point, the following considerations will come into play as you plan yonr commnnication. The more of these you can match, the likelier your message will be received successfully. Clearly, it is unrealistic to expect to match more than, say, the cognitive needs and style, bnt be aware that your readers will likely be reading you through a lens colored by these variables. 

Use your audience analysis to help determine the types of information to include under each main point. For example, when talking about the synthesis of nonlinear optical polyimides for practical applications, mention the approaches that have been developed to tackle the instability problems. When talking about pollution in an area, refer to the dumping of chemicals in a nearby stream. 

Use your audience analysis to decide how much information to include under a particular main point or how to apportion information under a main point. Not all main points are created equal. Include as much information in a section as is necessary to achieve audience understanding of, or agreement with, the main point of a section. For example, the problem section of a problem solution speech may need to be short or long, depending on how serious the audience perceives the problem to be. 

Through a focus on audience analysis, strategies for inproving the effectiveness of both written and oral presentations are explained. Commonly accepted (but frequendy broken) formatting rules for figures and tables are covered, as are hints to effective use of communication software. (Available on the acconpanying CD.)... 

In all engineering communication, a crucial step is audience analysis. Written or oral reporting is, by definition, a transfer of information. One s success at this transfer hinges on presenting the type, detail, and scope of information that the audience expects with a clarity that avoids misunderstandings. It is important that you do the following. 

The key to effective oral communication is, as it is for written communication, audience analysis. Include visuals that focus the audience attention on the areas of the project analysis that both you and the audience feel are important. Be sure that the audience receives the information required for making the right decision, and be sure not to bore the audience. If the readers of your report get bored, they may come back to it later. If the attention of your listeners starts to drift, the information is lost. 

Write a short (one paragraph) audience analysis for a design report in your design course. 

Training methods are selected on the basis of the training objectives, the needs assessment, the audience analysis, and intent of the training. A toolbox of various training techniques can then be applied where appropriate to a specific group or audience (Table 12.8). 

Training methods are selected on the basis of the training objectives, the needs assessment, the audience analysis, and intent of the training. 

Look your hearers in the eye. Good eye contact helps to increase the hearers interest and their participation in the presentation. Experienced speakers learn to analyze their audience and its reactions and make appropriate adjustments based on audience analysis. 

Chemical Risk Analysis is a practical handbook of chemical hazard and risk assessment, and is aimed particularly (but not exclusively) at the practitioner level. Its main target audiences include ... 

While many aspects of data analysis are introduced, starting from very basic facts, the book is not primarily written for the beginner. Its main audience is expected to come from post-graduate students, research and industrial chemists with sufficient interest in data analysis to warrant the development of their own software rather than relying on other people s packages that all too often are rather black boxes. 

Cost identification often involves the development of a probability or decision tree of the therapeutic pathway that describes all relevant downstream events related to use of that therapy and its comparator(s). Once the relevant resources are identified and measured (e.g. number of physician visits, treatment of side effects, number and duration of hospital visits, etc.), local costs/prices can be applied to those resources to determine the overall cost of that intervention. The scope of the resources (and costs) included in an analysis is determined by the perspective (or intended audience) of the study. 

Which focal points of genre analysis (audience and purpose, organization, writing conventions, grammar and mechanics, and/or science content)... 

The analysis plan should specify not only how the analysis will be conducted, but also how the results will be presented. Indeed, the way results will be communicated will usually influence the choice of both model structure and analysis method and is ultimately driven by the information needs of risk managers and other stakeholders and their management goals (see Figure 2.2). Careful advance planning for the communication of results is especially important for probabilistic assessments because they are more complex than deterministic assessments and less familiar to most audiences. It may be beneficial to present probabilistic and deterministic assessments together, to facilitate familiarization with the newer approaches. 

Since the Optional Reward proposal is relatively recent, it has yet to face serious scrutiny from a wide audience. As such, it remains an interesting idea that may deserve further analysis and consideration. 

I have aimed this book at an undergraduate audience of pharmaceutical science and chemistry students and the book gives an introduction to all the major techniques used in the analysis of pharmaceuticals... 

For thirty-five consecutive years Peligot occupied the chairs of analytical chemistry and glassmaking at the Central School of Arts and Manufactures, and during this time he wrote an important treatise on each of these subjects. He. also lectured to large, sympathetic audiences at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and taught a course in agricultural chemical analysis at the National Agronomic Institute. 

Churchill Ei enhart s definition of the practical power of a statis- tical method is the mathematical power of the method times the ] probability that it will ba used Too often, statisticians become carried away with the pure mathematical beauty of an approach to data analysis, and find that they have lost their audience and with it any hope that the method will ever be of practical value ... 

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