Audience analysis is the process of gathering and examining information of your listeners. This includes any relevant information that might help identify the best way to make your message reach your audience. For example, things like age, gender, ethnicity, nationality or others might influence people's reaction to a message and in order for communication to be effective, this would need some tailoring. When we try to identify specifically the beliefs, values or attitudes of the audience we are doing an attitudinal analysis, which is a way of audience analysis focusing on more socially shared ideas that affect how people would react to our message. Attitudes can be defined as people's likes and dislikes, beliefs are core ideas that are assumed to be true or false and values are standards of behavior or thinking that are considered valuable within a certain group. All of these affect how people will respond to what we are trying to communicate, specially if it's contrary to any of beliefs, values or attitudes they might already have.
