One Minute, One Question: How Well Do We Do Audience Analysis?

ATD’s Science of Learning Community has launched a new feature: One Minute, One Question. Each month, we’re asking L&D professionals to take a minute out of their busy days to answer a small question about something that has a big impact on the science of learning. 

In January, we examined audience analysis: When you are asked to build a learning or performance solution (such as instruction) for your organization, are you able to do an audience analysis before proceeding so you can understand the real needs of your audience? 

We asked this question because learning sciences research shows that needs analysis steps are especially critical to the success of training. What’s more, more understanding the audience is one of the most important aspects of needs analysis. 

According to the 161 responses, a majority of respondents get their audience analysis data from people other than the audience themselves. In fact, more than half (52.8 percent) of the respondents said: “I am often able to talk to someone who gives me information about the audience before I proceed.” 

This begs the question: Is this adequate? Well, that depends on what those people know. They could know quite a bit. But nothing is as good as talking to and sitting with actual audience members and understanding their work. 

Indeed, you can see from the data that some simply make assumptions. And you know what they say about assumptions. But again, some people may know a lot about people they have worked with for a long time. Please participate in our next One Minute One Question survey and look for the results next month!