I have often heard presentation “experts” say something like, “studies have shown that presenters rate themselves as much more effective than their audiences do.”  Have you heard something like this before?  I have never seen the research that supports this, (which doesn’t mean it isn’t out there), but I recently ran into an interesting study that relates to this subject. Kim  Sydow Campbel, PhD and David L. Mothersbaugh wondered how individual presenters would rate themselves compared to the audience members they presented to, and how both of those would compare to an instructor’s evaluation.  They conducted some interesting research which was published in the September 2001 issue of Business Communication Quarterly with the title: “Peer versus Self Assessment of Oral Business Presentation Performance“.   Dr. Campbell, who is a professor of management communication at the University of Alabama, collected ratings of the quality of individual presentations in an upper-level undergraduate business communication course in the spring of 2000.

Methods
Sixty-six individual students participated, worked in teams and each delivered four to five minute presentations.  The goal of each presentation was to report the team’s progress on a six-week project.  All participants were well trained on using the rating scales used in the study.  Three scales rated each presenter overall (holistically).  These 5-point scales had endpoints of very ineffective/very effective, very unprofessional/very professional, and very unprepared/very prepared.  In addition, six additional 5-point scales measured analytic factors and included both content and non-content factors including elements of delivery and even visual aids.

Results
In general, peer ratings of performance more closely correlated with the instructor’s evaluation than the presenters’, and the differences were significant for some parameters.  Peer evaluators were nearly identical to the instructor with respect to how analytic factors affected overall perceptions of performance.  In other words, the quality of delivery characteristics, command of materials, and content were all significant predictors of overall performance for peers and instructor, but not for the presenters themselves.  Very interestingly, for peers and instructor, the quality of visual aids did not predict overall perception of performance, while for the presenters themselves, it did.

Discussion
There are some interesting implications of this research. In the authors’ words:

• It appears that people are at a disadvantage when attempting to critically evaluate their own oral presentation performance.  Overall, presenters appear to overestimate (relative to their peers and instructor) the importance of their visual aids and underestimate (relative to their peers and instructor) the importance of content and delivery skills such as eye contact, body language, and voice quality in determining their audience’s perception of their oral business presentations.
• Self assessment does not closely reflect either peer or instructor assessments of quality in oral business presentations.
• The influence of visual aid quality on perceptions of overall presentation quality are uncertain, but appear to be very different for presenters compared to peers of instructors.

Presentation Facts
This study does not show (at least from what was published) that presenters giving oral business presentations rate themselves better than their audiences do.  But it does indicate that presenters and audiences seem to evaluate what is going on differently.  I have sent a note to Dr. Campbell to ask her if presenters rated themselves better or worse than their peers and the instructor, as this information wasn’t presented in the article.  There is also something interesting going on related to the use of visuals.  The article did not give specifics on what visuals were used or how they were evaluated. Is it possible that if the presenter thinks his/her visual aids are great, they then assume their presentation is great?  Does a great PPT presentation give a presenter a false sense of security?  What is clear from the results of this little study is that audience members studied did not associate quality visuals with a quality presentation.  Is it possible that you, Dear Presenter, are still the most important visual?