Different people have different educational needs. While there may be some needs that are general to all potential voters, it is likely that even these will be expressed differently by different individuals or groups.
Who Will Benefit from the Educational Programme?
Assessment of need has to consider the recipients or beneficiaries of the educational endeavour. There are various words that can be used to describe these recipients. Each of the words has its advantages and disadvantages, and educators working together can be unnecessarily confused by the differing terminology.
Communicators will often talk of "the public", or "publics", meaning a subset of people with particularly common characteristics. Advertisers may speak of an "audience", such as a "youth audience". Those conducting campaigns or with a particular public information message may consider "target groups" or "target audiences", such as rural women. And activists or some educators may talk of "constituencies" with whom they work.
Each of these words is being used to indicate the importance of defining carefully, and segmenting in as real a way as possible, the particular set of individuals with whom the educator plans to work. Even if the voter education mandate is universal and educators responsible for informing the general electorate (see High Impact Groups), a programme will have to consider different methods and messages for different segments of the population. Some groups may be marginalized, while others have special needs with respect to the voting process (see Marginalized Voters and Groups with Special Needs). Beyond the information needs of each target group, it will also be the case that some groups learn differently than others.
Constraints on Segmentation
There are constraints on the choices available to educators. Some of these constraints are linked to information and resources. It is not always possible to know or predict everything about individuals or groups of individuals, and aggregating people always leads to simplification.
Other constraints are introduced by political, constitutional, and legislative considerations. The voter educator may be obliged by law or by political imperative to give attention to particular audiences or constituencies. Yet there may be financial and logistical considerations. The resources needed to reach a small nomadic or exiled group, for example, may not be available no matter how important that group may consider itself, or be considered by others. Or the voter education programme may have to be generalised - through language choice, medium, or methodology - which might exclude some particular segment of society.
Voter educators have also have certain "values" that need to be made explicit in evaluating which constituencies will be targeted and to what extent. Educators may feel that, all things being equal, poor people require more attention than the affluent, even though both may require education. Or they may believe women's participation is of more importance than that of men.
In many of these choices, it may be possible to establish an educational programme that does not discriminate but rather builds on the strengths of particular educators to work in particular constituencies. There are also "high impact groups" that educators will want to reach out to because of the ripple effects that can be achieved by concentrating on such groups. Educators who are committed to the widening and deepening of democracy may also opt to focus their attention on the "marginalized" groups, noted above, for whom specialized (and often more costly) programmes have to be developed.
The Individual Voter
These terms - target, audience and constituency - are all inclusive terms. They aggregate individuals into manageable categories. Yet educators typically prefer not to aggregate people but rather to consider them as students, pupils, participants, or learners. Voter educators will be developing plans and curricula. And it is they who will be contemplating their task in terms of campaigns, public information and lessons. There will be times when they will be forced to use the inclusive terminology. But good educators will always be recalling the individual learner at the base of the planning.
