The July 2021 Toastmaster magazine has an article by Craig Harrison titled Due Your Due Diligence on pages 22 to 25. He says to avoid intellectual complacency and that:
“Professional speakers who fact-check know from experience to seek the original source of facts and stats.”
Two articles by John Bowe provide us with examples of what not to do. Back on August 14, 2020 I blogged about Toastmaster magazine is spreading nonsense from John Bowe about how common the fear of public speaking is. In an article by Suzanne Frey in the August issue he said that:
“I was thinking about the fact that 74% of Americans suffer from speech anxiety (it is the same or higher in most other cultures).”
His book, I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection had more specifically said the 74% came from the National Institutes of Health. I discussed how that percentage really was baseless rubbish from a commercial web site, Statistic Brain.
A new article by John Bowe at CNBC on June 21, 2021 is titled Bad at public speaking? Use this mental trick that takes just 15 minutes, says speech expert. It begins by instead stating that:
“Speech anxiety is one of the most common social fears, affecting 15% to 30% of the general population.”
He found those two percentages in a one-page magazine article from 2016 titled Observations: Public Speaking Anxiety in Graduate Medical Education – A Matter of Interpersonal and Communication Skills? It was written by Vickram Tejwani, Duc Ha, and Carlos Isada and appeared in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education (February 2016, Volume 8, no. 1 page 111). In the second paragraph they say about public speaking anxiety that:
“…. It is reported as prevalent in 15% to 30% of the general population (Ref. 2)….”
I had blogged about that article on March 1, 2016 in a post titled 17% of medical residents fear public speaking. They in turn referred to a review article from 2012 by Charles B. Pull titled Current status of knowledge on public speaking anxiety as the source for the 15% and 30%. For his review Pull had searched in the PubMed database up to September 2011. But that review article never explicitly mentions either 15% or 30%. I also had blogged about that article back on January 19, 2013 in a post titled A recent review article on public speaking anxiety.
I have blogged about 22 surveys about the fear of speaking in American adults. Based on them, the range really is 40% wide rather than 15% wide, and it runs from 17% to 57%. 13 of those surveys have percentages above 30%. In chronological order, here are the survey year and percentage for fear of public speaking from them, as discussed in my previous blog posts on the dates listed:
1973 Bruskin survey - 40.6%; October 27, 2009, The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from?
1987 Dental Health Advisor – 27%; September 19, 2012, Public speaking came first in a 1987 fear survey by Dental Health Advisor magazine
1988 Roper – 26%; September 18, 2012, Snakes came first in a 1988 Roper survey of what American adults were afraid of or bothered by
1990 to 1992, National Comorbidity Survey - 15.2% (for talking in front of a small group); January 10, 2021, Do more people fear speaking to large or to small audiences?
1990 to 1992, National Comorbidity Survey - 30.2%; November 2, 2008, Public speaking is still the #1 specific social fear, according to the latest results from the NCS-R survey
1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey - 45%; May 19, 2011, America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking – that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey.
1996 Roper survey – 56%; July 3, 2011, More Americans fear public speaking than getting fat, and death tied for third
1998 Gallup poll – 45%; March 19, 2001, Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears.
2001 Gallup poll – 40%; March 19, 2001, Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears.
2001 to 2003 National Comorbidity Survey – Replication - 21.2%; November 2, 2008, Public speaking is still the #1 specific social fear, according to the latest results from the NCS-R survey
2009 American Association of Endodontists – 42%; November15, 2009, Getting a root canal done is scarier than public speaking or a job interview
2010 LG – 50%; September 21, 2010, According to LG, people fear public speaking even more than cleaning, dentists, or doing taxes
2014 YouGov Survey – 56%; April 2, 2014, YouGov survey of U.S. adults found they most commonly were very afraid of snakes, heights, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space
2014 Chapman Survey – 25.3%; October 29, 2014, Chapman Survey on American Fears includes both zombies and ghosts
2015 Chapman Survey – 28.4%; October 15, 2015, Corruption of Federal Government Officials was first in the top ten list from the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears
2015 KRC Research – 32%; November 20, 2015, KRC Pulse Poll on American fears found the most common five were heights, public speaking, failure, spiders, and small spaces
2016 Kelton Global – 32%; April 30, 2016, Survey finds more U.S. homeowners fear their home being damaged by a natural disaster, or invaded by pests than public speaking, global warming, or a celebrity reality star running for president
2016 Chapman Survey – 25.5%; October 14, 2016, In the 2016 Chapman Survey of American Fears public speaking was ranked 33 rd out of 79 fears
2017 Chapman Survey – 23.3%; October 26, 2017, How can you make a public speaking coach run away like a scared zebra? Just tell them where fear of public speaking ranked in the fourth Chapman Survey on American Fears
2018 Chapman Survey – 26.2%; October 19, 2018, You probably won’t hear public speaking coaches discuss the 2018 Chapman Survey of American Fears
2019 OnePoll survey – 17%; January 29, 2019, Public speaking was only the 7th most common fear of Americans on a Top Ten List in a survey reported on January 24, 2019
2019 Chapman Survey – 30.2%; May 24, 2020, You probably won’t hear speaking coaches or motivational speakers cite results about fear of public speaking from the 2019 Chapman Survey of American Fears
2019 AAE survey – 57%; October 23, 2019, A new survey shows that more U.S. adults fear snakes (64%) than root canals or heights (59%), and speaking in public (57%)
Where did Tejwani et al get that range from 15% to 30%? Possibly they looked in Ref. 17 of Pull’s review, a 2009 article by A. W. Blote et al titled The relation between public speaking anxiety and social anxiety: a review, which in turn referred them to a 1998 article by Ronald C. Kessler, Murray B. Stein, and Patricia Berglund in the American Journal of Psychiatry (May 1998, pages 613 to 619) titled Social Phobia Subtypes in the National Comorbidity Survey. As I showed above, that survey found 30.2% feared public speaking and 15.2% feared talking in front of a small group. Those percentages are from a very serious survey, but it was done roughly thirty years ago. It’s not the latest word on that topic.
My cartoon image was modified from a clueless man at Wikimedia Commons and a library background at Openclipart.
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