An October 2023 web article by Eva Finn in Toastmaster magazine cites an article from 2000 rather than a 2022 survey from the university where she is a professor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a decent web article by Eva Finn in the October 2023 Toastmaster magazine titled 5 Tips to Land a Job or Internship. (Eva is an assistant artistic professor at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts). But the second sentence in Eva’s fourth paragraph claims:

 

“According to a Columbia State Community College study, public speaking anxiety is very common, not just among college students but the rest of the population as well.”

 

That article is by Louise Katz. It is from back in 2000 and just titled Public Speaking Anxiety. Louise opens by stating that:

 

“Public speaking anxiety is very common among both college students and the general population. Some estimates are that as many as 20-85% of people experience more or less anxiety when they need to speak in public.”

 

The 85% came from a 1988 article by Michael T. Motley that I blogged about on September 29, 2020 in a post titled A quantified version of a discredited Mark Twain quotation about fear of public speaking.

 

The Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University does an annual Survey of American Fears. The list from their eighth 2022 survey, which reports the sum for Very Afraid plus Afraid, found that fear of public speaking was ranked #46 of 92 fears at 34.0% (barely over a third). And results from the ninth 2023 survey just came out. For 2023 public speaking is  on the list at #53 of 97 at 28.7%. And their detailed results for 2022 and 2023 reported fears at four levels: Very Afraid, Afraid, Slightly Afraid, and Not Afraid.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bar chart shown above gives all the results from those two Chapman surveys. Why didn’t Eva report them rather than pointing way back to 2000?   

 

Toastmasters previously hasn’t reported results from the Chapman Survey. I mentioned this back on October 26, 2017 in a blog post titled 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.

 

The cartoon image was adapted from this one at Openclipart.