A note on the judgment of speaker effectiveness

Abstract

Ratings of the effectiveness of the speaker at each of 14 meetings (445 participants, some attending more than 1 meeting) on an 8-item rating scale showed that a simple rating procedure can yield useful discrimination as to the excellence of public-speaker addressed meetings. However, this discrimination is primarily on a general or overall factor, with little evidence of differentiation among such elements as the speaker's qualifications or ability, topic coverage, personal gain from meeting, or satisfaction of expectations. Ratings of "timeliness of topic" alone tended to be somewhat independent of the evaluation of the meeting itself. Ratings of the effectiveness of the speaker were not significantly correlated with attendance at the meetings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)