Two Investigations of the Relationship among Selected Ratings of Speech Effectiveness and Comprehension

This research project examined the relationship between measures of speaker effectiveness obtained from rating scales and those obtained from objective comprehension tests of speech content. Two studies were used in order to provide independently derived results which could be compared. In the first study, 49 undergraduate public-speaking students judged 6 speeches using both a modified Baird-Knower rating scale and an objective comprehension test. Approximately half of the subjects listened to audio tapes of the speeches and half to video tapes with four of the six speeches used for final analysis. In the second study, 1190 students in 54 basic speech classes each judged one speech using five rating scales and a three-item comprehnsion test. Results from these studies indicated that (1) relationships among ratings on individual scales were high, (2) comprehension measures correlated to a modest degree (first investigation only), and (3) neglibible relationships existed between ratings and comprehension scores. These findings suggest that rating scales and comprehension scores are not measuring the same degrees and forms of speaker effectiveness. (JM)