Religion and Religiousness

One surprising finding from a poll on religious affiliation among Americans that you may want to add to your public speaking discussion of religion and religiousness in audience analysis finds that about half of all adult Americans change their religious affiliation at least once. The poll and lots of other interesting material on religion useful in audience analysis discussions may be found at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life at http://pewforum.org/.

Change and Audience Analysis

The Change Report has some interesting implications for our discussions of audience analysis. I’m not sure I’ve seen any public speaking textbook that talks about geographical differences. For example, Northeasterners have a greater fear of death of a family member than do those from other areas of the country. Not surprisingly, Southerners are more likely to fear a hurricane or similar natural disaster than are those in other parts of the country. Southerners also worry more about the deterioration of personal finances than do Westerners. These types of survey findings, it seems to me, have interesting implications for selecting a topic, for gaining attention, for motivational appeals, and lots more.