D#3, HW#5, Audience Analysis

One group I think I will focus on for this project is Parents.

FIRST LEVEL OF AUDIENCE ANALYSIS:

• The education and technological background of Parents as a whole varies greatly. However I think it is safe to assume that most (not all) parents have concerns about their children and their health and education. I also think is would be a safe assumption that most parents know about safe sex, and can (if they sat down and thought about it) clearly see what their children are not being taught in an abstinence-only sex education class.
• I would think that most parents would be gung ho for a safe sex education class, but i know this may not be accurate. There are many biases that interfere. Such biases include personal and religious beliefs. This makes my topic very difficult, because although there are several different religious beliefs that promote abstinence until marriage it ultimately is a personal decision and no matter what parents may think, they can not shelter their kids forever. Because of this hopefully parents will realize that it is perfectly fine to teach about abstinence until marriage and promote it, but it is also necessary to teach about safe sex. It's a necessary precaution that I think most ignore.
• The purposes that they have for reading the research that I plan on doing is mainly the safety of their children. As well as the future of the U.S.'s concerns with over population, unplanned pregnancies, and STD spread. But I would think that parents would be more concerned and alarmed to find out just how much abstinence-only education does not work and that their family could pay the consequences for the schools (and parent's themselves) not teaching about safe sex.
• After reading my research I would like parents to be more open to safe sex education if not adamantly promote it. I hope they will open their eyes and realize that although in their ideal world their "little babies" would never have sex, reality says otherwise. And I hope they realize that it would be much wiser to educate teenagers about the risks and consequences as well as safety measures to use when having sex, rather than act like it doesn't happen.
• After reading the research I plan on doing I would hope that they can be more verbal and fight harder for safe sex education.

SECOND LEVEL OF AUDIENCE ANALYSIS:

• I would assume that they roughly know what is taught in abstinence-only sex education classes. I would also assume that they know what safe sex is and some (not all) methods of contraceptives etc.
• I think that parents would want to know how affective or non-affective abstinence-only education really is. Information that would be interesting to them would be the rise in teen oral-sex participation, the rise in spreading of STD's, and pregnancies, etc.
• I think they need to know all of the above. I also think they need to know the reason why abstinence-only education is so prevalent (not because it's more affective, but because of political/religious reasons etc.) ; that way they can take action to change it.