Teenage pregnancy Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Teenage pregnancy - Term Paper Example According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States government could save $9 billion dollars annually if teenage pregnancy were prevented. As a result of increasing cases of teenage pregnancy, most of the funds are spent primarily in foster care, health care, and incarceration costs. Teenage pregnancy is a matter of concern in the State of Mississippi, which is among the top five states with the highest number of teenage pregnancies (Klemas et al., 2009). The majority of teenagers who were pregnant are those of non-Hispanic origin. In a survey study conducted in 2006, Mississippi was the leading in teenage pregnancies amongst the 50 states (Klemas et al., 2009). Additionally, Mississippi was the leading with teen births all over the country and it has led to a loss to the State government of Mississippi due to heavy spending on various programs aimed at addressing the challenges (Klemas et al., 2009). From the above discussion, teenage pregnancy is a topic o f concern in the American society. It has attracted the attention of all the stakeholders including the health, government, and nongovernmental organizations. Additionally, the government has spent considerable millions of dollars derived from the public funds to finance the health care and other incarnations related to teenage pregnancy (Klemas et al., 2009). Teenage pregnancy affects everybody, and its a duty of everyone to rally support to stop the issue. The most important solution to the problem includes the government use of resources to offer education to the targeted group and the use of media to educate and inform on the consequences of teenage pregnancy. Teenage pregnancy can stop if the government increases awareness amongst the targeted group through the use of its resources to campaign against the vice. Many of the teenage pregnancies are unplanned for and mostly occur due to poverty and lack of

Education Essay Example for Free

Education Essay When we think of someone who is well-educated, we typically think of doctors, lawyers and people in those categories. This does not always means a person has to have a fancy degree or title behind their name to be well-educated. Being well-educated can come in many different ways. So what does it mean to be well-educated? In this essay, I will give some examples as to what I feel well-educated means to me, other than having a degree. As I read thru the article by Alfie Kohn about principle leadership on what does it mean to be well-educated; I became very intrigued. Over my 21 years with the US Army, I have had several officers over me who have their degree but still not educated on life in the military. Yes, they went to college and got educated in the books, but when it comes to military life or combat, it’s still a lot to be educated on. There were times when an officer came to me for advice or what to do because he knew I had many years of experience on the job which therefore made me more educated than he. It’s no different from when I first enlisted in the military; there were people over me I had to go to because I wasn’t educated in the job. In Alfie Kohn’s article, he stated â€Å"my wife has a doctoral degree from Harvard but if you ask her what 8 times 7 is, she would freeze up. † The same concept applies with some officers I worked under in my military career. You could go to them about a lot things, and they could give you answer without thinking but it could be something as simple as putting up a frame tent and they wouldn’t have a clue. But if you take a person that has set up a frame tent several times without any hesitation and not ask the question, â€Å"how? † I consider this person well-educated because he has done this task many times. I do believe a person becomes well-educated with time and practice. Just because you go to college and graduated doesn’t necessarily mean you well-educated on the job. For me, being well-educated can mean different things for different people. For instance, take my dad. My dad is 65 years old and retired from his job for as long as I can remember a mechanic. After his retirement, my dad sits in his chair and watches cartoons, old television shows and westerns and tells me stories of his past. My dad never even finished high school but I do consider him to be a well-educated man because of things he has taught me and the way he raised me. My father never had much growing up, so he had to work in the fields and didn’t have much opportunity for education. He had to start work at a very young age as a mechanic once he turn 16; a job he done till he retired at age of 62. By those many years in one profession; even though he doesn’t have a high school diploma nor college degree, I still consider him a well-educated man from his years of experience. You may be able to walk up to my dad and ask him an algebra problem but if you ask him anything dealing with mechanical on a car, there would be no problem. He didn’t have and school education, but he knew how to count and manage his earnings. He also married my mom when he was 18 and done a really good job of raising three kids. I remember growing up and watching my father work on people car out in the yard and I use to wonder what he was doing? I didn’t have a clue of what he was doing but I know the person he whose car he was working on was very satisfied after he was done. He taught me how to be a man and what mistakes not to make from his mistakes. I know he wasn’t good with math but he could really save money and make his money work for us. One thing I never forgot he said, â€Å"always put some money away from every check for that rainy day. † Once I got my first job, I have always done just that; even still to this day. He also taught me the responsibility to always take care of your family first before anything else. It didn’t quite understand then what he was referring to then, but as I got older, I knew he was just educating me on how to be a man that takes care of his family and home. For that I consider my father to be well-educated. I believe if a person just takes the time and be patient at whatever there pursuing, he or she will become well-educated. For some, going to college and receiving a degree and be very difficult, whether is financial or just didn’t score high enough to get into college. I do believe that if we got to college and graduated with a degree, we can get better jobs and be well-educated in the books but maybe not hands on in the field of their choosing. I know once I graduated from high school, going to college was the last thing on my mind and joining the military was always my desire. I’ve always felt like school just wasn’t for me because I had hard time maintaining grades and learning the books. I have always been more of hands on person more than school. I do consider myself well-educated because I spent 21 years in the military and have accomplished all tasks set before me with high standards. In conclusion, I believe that a person doesn’t necessarily have to go to college and get a degree to be considered well-educated. We as people can determine who we feel is well-educated by knowledge and experience as well as schooling; whether it be at junior college, university or technical college. So what does it mean to be well-educated is a question that can be argued for years to come.

The Root Causes Of Terrorism

The Root Causes Of Terrorism Few events in history shape the way societies react to future anomalies, one such being, the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001.With this event followed a flurry of discussions on Terrorism in media, academia circles, and several other forums. The spill over effect was felt all across the globe in form of pre-emptive coercive military and diplomatic intervention by the super powers in states like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. But with rising number of losses, both human and pecuniary, suffered by the society on the whole; is this strategy of intimidation coupled with aid addressing the root cause of the problem? Terrorism is one of the gravest challenges faced by the world today. Vast monetary resources in form of military as well as developmental aid have been diverted to counter this menace. In spite of the ostentatious expenditures sustained by the world community, have we been successful so far in quelling this threat? Leaders and academicians from wide spectrum of disciplines have been advocating for addressing the root causes of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, the question looming over this entire debate is what are the root causes of Terrorism? One of the key linkages of terrorism identified by the political ranks, especially after the 9-11 attacks was, terrorism and other forms of political violence are a product of economic and socio-political factors. US-President Bush (2002) argued that there is a vicious circle of political disenfranchisement, state failure and terror, saying that because [] persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair [] these failed states can become havens for terror. Similarly, then-UK Prime Minister Blair (2004) argued: [] poverty and instability leads to weak states, which can become havens for terrorists []. (Krieger and Meierrieks 2010). The remarks discussed above open a new-fangled and a broader approach to addressing the problem. Terrorism is admittedly a very complex social phenomenon. It is the outcome of a set of quantitative as well as qualitative factors, which function at various levels of causation and where some of the factors are directly observable while others are latent (Drakos and Gofas April 2006). Although terrorism is a presumably multifaceted and multi-casual phenomenon lying between the nexus of war and peace, scholarly research on the causes of terrorism has all but escaped rigorous empirical analysis (OBrien June 1996) .Nevertheless, in this contribution I attempt to identify the plausible reasons for the emergence of terrorism. The study exposits the economic, social, and political factors which are considered to be the main causes of manifestation of terrorism based on the existing literature and widely held perceptions. I explore the empirical validity of the causes of terrorism using econometric methods and seek to establish results which could be used in formulating effective counter terrorism strategies. The Dissertation is divided into 4 sections. I first discuss the theoretical foundations of my work and then in the subsequent section move on to discussing the existing literature on this issue. The main focus of Section 3 is to show if there exists a relationship (even though casual) linking terrorism with economic, social and political conditions in various regions across the globe. In order to capture this relationship I estimate a panel regression for 109 countries from 1971 to 2005. Section 4 involves a detailed discussion of the problems associated with the estimated procedures and how results could have been affected by them. Lastly I conclude by summarizing my main findings and provide recommendations based on the empirical findings using the panel regressions Theoretical Foundation There are myriad circumstances capable of giving rise to terrorism. Terrorists exist in developed as well as less developed countries; in former colonial states and in independent ones; in democratic and in non democratic states and so on. This implies that one needs to incorporate a number of diverse conditions while trying to develop an understanding of Terrorism. This makes it difficult to arrive at any form of generalisation (Lia and Skjà ¸lberg 2000). In spite of this complexity, the causes of terrorism can be broadly explained by the following approaches1 -: Psychological Societal Geopolitical The Psychological approach focuses on the individual or a group of individuals decision to become a terrorist or join the terrorist group or sympathise with the ideology. Psycho-pathological and Psycho-sociological are two important approaches that fall under the psychological approach. The former treats an individual terrorist in isolation and accepts violent behaviour as a deviant characteristic. Such an advancement has been criticized not only for divesting terrorism completely from socio-economic and political setting, but also on empirical grounds (Lia and Skjà ¸lberg 2000).Authors such as Wintrobe (2006), Frey and Luchinger (2004) while criticizing the psycho-pathological approach argue that terrorists are indeed rational beings and operate on the basis of a cost-benefit principle. The Psycho-sociological approach on the other hand relates psychological factors and the societal environment [Wilkinson, Paul 1990]. Several others, such as Crenshaw (1990), Stedman (1997) also arg ue in favour of combining psychological and environmental factors on various stratums to arrive at any comprehensive theory of the causes of terrorism. Under the above mentioned framework theories such as the relative deprivation theory [Piazza, A James (2004)], Contagion theory [Weimann and Brouiss (1988)] are the most widely used premise to explain the phenomenon of terrorism. The relative deprivation1 theory emphasizes deprivation in form of poverty, health, life expectancy and etc as major causes of terrorism. The contagion theory on the other hand considers terrorism to be duration dependant i.e. terrorism being far from random (Lia and Skjà ¸lberg 2000); There exists voluminous empirical evidence suggesting the relevance of the contagion theory1. Societal approach lays emphasis on the historical and present social, cultural, economical, political, in short overall environmental development of any given region. Under the societal approach, factors such as modernization, globalization, urbanization, economic development, state legitimacy, politics etc are assumed to be primary in explaining terrorism [Crenshaw 1990a, 1995]. Critics of the societal approach often argue that the relationship between terrorism and the factors treated under the societal approach are at best casual. Lastly the geo-political approach essentially relates to International Terrorism. This approach considers factors such as state sponsorship of terrorism, hegemony and weak and collapsed state as major causes of terrorism. Works of Volgy et al., Guelke, have pioneered in using the geo political approach to explain the phenomenon of terrorism. The opportunity cost model is one of the extensively used models in economics to analyse the causes of terrorism. In this work I use the same microeconomic opportunity cost model presented by Freytag Kruger and Schneider (2008), Anderton, Charles H; Carter, John R (2004)]. As I will show in discussions to follow, that such a treatment is indeed capable of encompassing the theories explained by the various approaches discussed above, hence making it ideal for usage in my analysis. Also, while formulating policies for counter terrorism strategies the usage of opportunity cost model assumes even a greater level of importance [Bruno S. Frey and Simon Luechinger (2003)] The traditional microeconomic framework looks at the decision making calculus and goals of an individual terrorist, as well as a group of terrorists and their sympathisers. One of the basic assumptions of this framework is that terrorist or the terrorist organizations are rational decision makers (essentially adhering to the rational choice model1) who have preferences over terrorism as well as ordinary activities [Anderton, Charles H; Carter, John R (2004)]. Incentives for an individual terrorist differ from that of the leaders who organize the terror. The opportunity costs of a leader of the terrorist organization are not measurable directly; violence for them is just a means to an end (Harrison, 2006).Thus their opportunity costs are reflected in their ability to use violence. Since the ability to use violence depends on the involved economic costs which inturn depends on the environment, hence we can conclude that the societal environment indirectly reflect the opportunity cost f acing a leader. On the contrary, for an individual terrorist, incentives could be the solidarity that the group provides or the economic rewards that the he or she may be able to reap from terrorism or otherwise .His or hers opportunity cost in fact would be directly reflected in the societal environment. How an individual decision making dilemma can have an implication for the various subgroups on the whole is as follows. For any organization to survive, it is the preferences of their recruits or the volunteers that matter the most since they are being directly affected by their own actions as against the leader. Hence by analysing the individual choice problem we are in a way capturing the choices faced by the various sub-groups on the whole. Given this I focus on an individual faced with 2 choices either to become a terrorist or consume material rewards. I assume that there exists a set of rewards (mental) that an individual can gain from committing an act of terror or sympathising with the cause. On the other hand an individual by not becoming a terrorist can reap the benefits of employing his energies in other productive activities. I represent this in the figure shown below. The decision to become a terrorist or not depends on the shape of the utility curve. A high preference for terrorism would imply greater their willingness to some material rewards to achieve an increment to mental rewards; they would have steep indifference curves in the utility space. Non-terrorists receive no utility or even disutility from terrorism, so their indifferences curves would be flat or upward sloping. The shape of the utility curve determines the strength of the substitution and the income effect. For any terrorist the utility maximization problem can be written down in the following manner: Argmax. (T, O) U (1) Subject to R = Pt T + Po O (Budget Line) 1(eyerman) (2) Where R denotes the total resources; Pt and Po denote the respective prices of terrorism1 (terrorism as a public good and its pricing) and composite good respectively; T denotes the quantity of terrorism and O denotes the quantity of composite good. In fig 1 for any individual the utility is maximized at point A. Now suppose that the GDP, democracy or education etc increase. This increases the material wealth available to the person there by increasing the opportunity cost of terrorist activities. The budget line pivots around the point D and the new budget constraint is DF with the new equilibrium level being at point C. Similarly, when opportunity cost of terrorist activities fall, the budget constraint becomes flatter (shown by DG) and this over all increases the preferences for mental rewards otherwise Terrorism. The corner solution given by point D shows the maximum level of utility that a person can achieve by committing a terrorist attack. As noted by [Kruger et al (2008)] this is the point at which an individual chooses to commit suicide bombing. Mental Rewards Source: The origins of terrorism One can also represent this choice problem using an inter-temporal budget constraint. Assuming that the terrorists have a two-period horizon and must choose between terrorist activities today (T0) and tomorrow (T1) based on resources today (R0) and tomorrow (R1), the inter-temporal budget constraint1 [Walter Enders* Todd Sandler 2002] is given by: T1 = R1 + (1+ r) (R0- T0), Where r is the interest rate. (3) In the above equation tomorrows terrorism equals tomorrows resource endowment plus the earnings on savings from the initial period. The inter-temporal budget constraint framework can be used to explain the contagion effects via effects such as the inter-temporal substitution effects. Hence any shift or a tilt in the budget line DE would either raise or lower the opportunity cost of terrorism. The changes in the budget line are due to changes in the economic, social or political factors, and other factors which fall under the various approaches discussed in the first paragraph of this section. One can also restate the above mechanism in the following way, the utility that an individual derives from being peaceful or being violent depends upon the environment that the individual functions in. This is because the opportunity costs for being violent or peaceful facing an individual depend on macro variables affecting the settings that he or she operates under. These macro variables as we have seen can be either country specific or globally universal. This essentially gives us a new equation for the utility of the form (4) Where is a vector of macro variables that affect the opportunity cost of an individual; represents the vector of coefficients which suggest the magnitude and the direction of the relationship that each macro variable shares with the utility that an individual attains from being either peaceful or violent; is the error term in the equation depicting the other factors which may effect the utility. As seen earlier, factors identified by the theories listed above such as poverty, globalization, geopolitical-setting, urbanization etc. can be used to explain the phenomenon of terrorism by using the traditional framework of opportunity cost Thus the challenge lies in identifying the key macro variables which affect the opportunity cost. But before moving on to empirically testing the relevance of the macro variables effecting terrorism, I now review the existing literature in the subsequent section. Existing Literature one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter problem (Jenkins 1982; Hoffman 1998).

Nuclear Power And Its Uses :: essays research papers

Nuclear Power and Its Uses At first nuclear power was only seen as a means of destruction but after World War II a major effort was made to apply nuclear energy to peacetime uses. Nuclear power if made when a nucleus of an atom is split to release a powerful burst of energy. Though technological advancements nuclear power now supplies us with new medical aids, a new power source and new ways to do scientific research. New medical advancements are being produced rapidly due to nuclear power. Nuclear material is now being used to treat diseases. Pacients suffering from cancer can then be exposed to the healing effects of the radiation under controlled conditions. The radiation of the nuclear energy can help in medical tests. Radioactive phosphorus is an important diagnostic aid. It is injected into the veins of a patient, it concentrates in the cells of certain brain tumors. Thyroid gland strongly attracts iodine. Radioactive iodine is used both in diagnosing and in treating diseases of the thyroid. Nuclear power is changing the face of medicine with new cures and tests that will cure millions.. Nuclear power can be converted into strong and efficient nuclear energy and be used for many purposes. Nuclear power reactors generates heat that is converted into steam. The steam can be used directly for energy. This energy is used in transportation. Most military subs are now ran by nuclear energy. The most used purpose of nuclear energy can also be used to generate electric power for example in a commercial nuclear power plant. Another way to produce nuclear energy is by gas-cooled reactors with either carbon dioxide or helium as the coolant instead of water. This method is used mainly in commercial nuclear plants in the United Kingdom and France due to the lack of freshwater. With growing popularity nuclear energy will definitely of the future with new ways to use this energy in a positive manner. Scientists can now use nuclear power for biological research to help understand life more. Radioactive isotopes have been described as the most useful research tool since the invention of the microscope. Physiologists use them to learn where and at what speed physical and chemical processes occur in the human body. Isotopes are also used for agricultural Biologists use radioactive isotopes to see how plants absorb chemicals as they grow. With radioactive cobalt, botanists can produce new types of plants. Structural variations that normally take years of selective breeding to develop can be made to occur in a few months. Many believe that nuclear power is too destructive and as such should be

Mr. Omijie Famous

A Brief History of School Guidance and Counseling in the United States The history of school counseling formally started at the turn of the twentieth century, although a case can be made for tracing the foundations of counseling and guidance principles to ancient Greece and Rome with the philosophical teachings of Plato and Aristotle. There is also evidence to argue that some of the techniques and skills of modern-day guidance counselors were practiced by Catholic priests in the Middle Ages, as can be seen by the dedication to the concept of confidentiality within the confessional.Near the end of the sixteenth century, one of the first texts about career options appeared: The Universal Plaza of All the Professions of the World, (1626) written by Tomaso Garzoni. Nevertheless, formal guidance programs using specialized textbooks did not start until the turn of the twentieth century. The factors leading to the development of guidance and counseling in the United States began in the 1890 s with the social reform movement. The difficulties of people living in urban slums and the widespread use of child labor outraged many.One of the consequences was the compulsory education movement and shortly thereafter the vocational guidance movement, which, in its early days, was concerned with guiding people into the workforce to become productive members of society. The social and political reformer Frank Parsons is often credited with being the father of the vocational guidance movement. His work with the Civic Service House led to the development of the Boston Vocation Bureau. In 1909 the Boston Vocation Bureau helped outline a system of vocational guidance in the Boston public schools.The work of the bureau influenced the need for and the use of vocational guidance both in the United States and other countries. By 1918 there were documented accounts of the bureau's influence as far away as Uruguay and China. Guidance and counseling in these early years were considered to be mostly vocational in nature, but as the profession advanced other personal concerns became part of the school counselor's agenda. The United States' entry into World War I brought the need for assessment of large groups of draftees, in large part to select appropriate people for leadership positions.These early psychological assessments performed on large groups of people were quickly identified as being valuable tools to be used in the educational system, thus beginning the standardized testing movement that in the early twenty-first century is still a strong aspect of U. S. public education. At the same time, vocational guidance was spreading throughout the country, so that by 1918 more than 900 high schools had some type of vocational guidance system.In 1913 the National Vocational Guidance Association was formed and helped legitimize and increase the number of guidance counselors. Early vocational guidance counselors were often teachers appointed to assume the extra duties of t he position in addition to their regular teaching responsibilities. The 1920s and 1930s saw an expansion of counseling roles beyond working only with vocational concerns. Social, personal, and educational aspects of a student's life also needed attention. The Great Depression of the 1930s led to the restriction of funds for counseling programs.Not until 1938, after a recommendation from a presidential committee and the passage of the George Dean Act, which provided funds directly for the purposes of vocational guidance counseling, did guidance counselors start to see an increase in support for their work. After World War II a strong trend away from testing appeared. One of the main persons indirectly responsible for this shift was the American psychologist Carl Rogers. Many in the counseling field adopted his emphasis on â€Å"nondirective† (later called â€Å"client-centered†) counseling.Rogers published Counseling and Psychotherapy in 1942 and Client-Centered Therapy in 1951. These two works defined a new counseling theory in complete contrast to previous theories in psychology and counseling. This new theory minimized counselor advice-giving and stressed the creation of conditions that left the client more in control of the counseling content. In 1958 the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was enacted, providing aid to education in the United States at all levels, public and private.Instituted primarily to stimulate the advancement of education in science, mathematics, and modern foreign languages, NDEA also provided aid in other areas, including technical education, area studies, geography, English as a second language, counseling and guidance, school libraries, and educational media centers. Further support for school counseling was spurred by the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik and fears that other countries were outperforming the United States in the fields of mathematics and science.Hence, by providing appropriate funding for educa tion, including guidance and counseling, it was thought that more students would find their way into the sciences. Additionally, in the 1950s the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) was formed, furthering the professional identity of the school counselor. The work of C. Gilbert Wrenn, including his 1962 book The Counselor in a Changing World, brought to light the need for more cultural sensitivity on the part of school counselors.The 1960s also brought many more counseling theories to the field, including Frederick Perl's gestalt therapy, William Glasser's reality therapy, Abraham Maslow and Rollo May's existential approach, and John Krumboltz's behavioral counseling approach. It was during this time that legislative support and an amendment to the NDEA provided funds for training and hiring school counselors with an elementary emphasis. In the 1970s the school counselor was beginning to be defined as part of a larger program, as opposed to being the entire program.There wa s an emphasis on accountability of services provided by school counselors and the benefits that could be obtained with structured evaluations. This decade also gave rise to the special education movement. The educational and counseling needs of students with disabilities was addressed with the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975. The 1980s saw the development of training standards and criteria for school counseling. This was also a time of more intense evaluation of education as a whole and counseling programs in particular.In order for schools to provide adequate educational opportunities for individuals with disabilities, school counselors were trained to adapt the educational environment to student needs. The duties and roles of many counselors began to change considerably. Counselors started finding themselves as gatekeepers to Individualized Education Programs (IEP) and Student Study Teams (SST) as well as consultants to special education teachers, especially after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.The development of national educational standards and the school reform movement of the 1990s ignored school counseling as an integral part of a student's educational development. The ASCA compensated partially with the development of national standards for school counseling programs. These standards clearly defined the roles and responsibilities of school counseling programs and showed the necessity of school counseling for the overall educational development of every student. Major Roles and Functions for School Counselors

Audience Analysis Essay

Communication is one of the most important skills that an individual can possess when presenting to a group of people. The audience should always be focal point of the presenter as communication is an important foundation and can often determine the success or failure of a message being received. When communication is done properly it can build respect and trust between groups and help identity the issues at hand. The presenter must have a good understanding of the audience’s culture in order to effectively communicate with the group. In this assignment I have been asked to present quarterly sales information in an in-person meeting to a group of stakeholders that includes managers, salespeople, and customers. I have been asked to answer a number of different questions before I present my information to the audience. The following questions will be answered in this paper. 1.What are audience characteristics you need to consider?2.What communication channels would be appropriate and why?3.What are some considerations that you must keep in mind given the diversity of the audience?4.What would you do to ensure that your message is effective?Before you can prepare a presentation you must consider the characteristics of your audience. I know that my audience consists of managers, salespeople, and customers of this particular organization. Because I have identified my audience I now have a better understanding of the audience’s knowledge of the subject. I also understand their interest in the subject; I understand that the different groups of individuals may only be interested in certain results of the quarterly sales information that is being presented. Managers and salespeople may have different subject knowledge than the customers. I will needs to address the different needs of all parties in attendance. I will have to customize certain parts of my presentation in order to address the specific needs of each group within the audience. I will also need to understand what the audience is expecting to learn from my presentation. I should be able to meet and exceed their expectations and the audience should walk away with their questions answered and explained as well as have a better understanding of the quarterly sales information that was presented to them. Because this is an in-person meeting certain communication channels are more appropriate than others. Power-point presentations would be an appropriate method of communication between the presenter and the audience. This is an effective method because it not only allows the presenter to discuss the statistics; but will also allow the present to show the audience the statistics in detail and all together as a group. Printed handouts or documents are another method of communication that would be considered appropriate in an in-person meeting. This method allows the audience to take part in reading the information provided and also gives them something to take with them from the meeting for future reference. Because the majority of the information is being presented orally, the presenter must consider their own body language and speech effectiveness to the audience. Body language and speech are both very important as the audience will be feeding off of the enthusiasm of the presenter. If the presenter gets the attention of their audience it is important to keep it in order to effectively communicate the information. Because there is diversity in the audience certain considerations must be kept in mind when presenting quarterly sales information. Each group will have different levels of interest in the information being presented. The customers will probably not have the same level of interest in certain aspects of the presentation as the managers and salespeople. Another consideration that the presenter must keep in mind is the information that is being communicated to the group. There is a certain amount of statistical data that the organization might not want all the members of the audience to know about. This information might be better presented in a manager’s only meeting. Other considerations that a presenter may want to keep in mind given the diversity of the audience is the average age, gender, culture background, education, economic status, and group memberships of the attending audience. These considerations individually may not have a big impact on the methods of communication chosen by the presenter, but together will allow the presenter to understand the diversity of the audience to which the information is being communicated. To ensure that the presentation is a success and the information is received effectively I would make sure that I have a concrete agenda and use it. I would also make sure that I interact with the audience, for example when presenting the sales data I might ask the audience if anyone has any suggestions to help increase the sales in a particular area. I would ask some open-ended questions to help encourage audience participation. I would also ask the audience to participate in constructive group discussions and would frequently check for group consensus on particular issues and decisions. At the end of the meeting I would survey the group through E-mail, fax, letter to ensure that the information that was presented was received and understood. I would also make myself available to answer any questions that may need clarification on an individual level. References Locker, K., & Kienzer, D. (2008). Business and Administrative Communication (8th edition). McGraw-Hill, 2008 New York, NY. Retrieved from the University of Phoenix web-site. Payne, B. (2008). Effective group Communication. Retrieved on April 24, 2009 from the world wide web at: http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/DPI/nreninf.nsf/childdocs/-C835B1CE4BC7F1D04A2568B30004FC37-4FEBC5DEBF535AC1CA256BC8000410EB-5D3323C8EDE7C7EB4A256DEA00294D0A-B59DCFB30DB614C3CA256BCF000AD4E0?openPearson, Allyn & Bacon (1995-2009). Demographic Characteristics of Your Audience. Retrieved on April 24, 2009 from the world wide web at: http://wps.ablongman.com/ab_public_speaking_2/24/6223/1593259.cw/index.html . Copyright  © 1995 – 2009, Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Pearson Allyn & Bacon. McGee, J. Important Characteristics of your Audience. Writing and Designing Print Materials for Beneficiaries: A Guide for State Medicaid Agencies. Health Care Financing Administration, Baltimore, MD. HCFA Publication Number 10145. October 1999, page 66, and the Plain English Network Web site at http://www.plainlanguage.gov. Retrieved from the world wide web on April 26, 2009 at: http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section3/popups/characteristics_pop.htm