Research Methods- Content Analysis Flashcards
Content analysis:
an indirect observational method that is used to analyse human behaviour, investigating through studying human artefacts (the things people make).
How is Content analysis written?
Content analysis is often on the written word (non-numerical/qualitative data), or write-ups of spoken words (transcripts). This is transformed into quantitative data
To perform a content analysis
1 - Decide a research question
2 - Select a sample - (e.g. randomly/systematically) from a larger quantity of all possible data (e.g. diary entries, tweets, children’s books).
3 - Coding - The researcher decides on categories/coding units to be recorded (e.g. occurrences of particular words), these are based on the research question.
4 - Work through the data - Read the sample, and tally the number of times the predetermined categories appear.
5 - Data analysis - can be performed on the quantitative data to look for patterns
Testing for reliability/ assessing for consistency
Test-retest reliability
Run the content analysis again on the same sample and compare the two sets of data.
Testing for reliability/ assessing for consistency
Inter-rater reliability
A second rater also performs the content analysis, with the same set of data and the same behavioural categories. Compare the two sets of data.
How closely the two sets of data match is assessed with a…?
test of correlation such as spearman’s rho. A correlation of 0.8 or stronger is usually accepted as showing the data is reliable
Content analysis
Evaluation
✅
• The “artefacts” are usually not created for research but are taken from the real world. This means content analysis has high external validity, and findings should be generalisable to other real-world situations.
• As the artefacts come from the real world it is often easy to gather a sample.
•Other researchers should be able to replicate a content analysis using the
Content analysis
Evaluation
❌
•As the researcher will often need to interpret subjective text, this may lead to researcher/observer bias, when researchers tend to interpret the text in a way that supports their pre-existing views.
• The data is created for purposes other than the research as the data was not created under controlled conditions it may lack validity. For example, written historical records such as diaries may not contain an accurate record of the past but contain inaccuracies, and not all diaries have an equal chance of surviving into the present to be selected in a sample.
Thematic analysis:
Researchers start by attempting to identify the deeper meaning of the text by reading it first, and allowing themes to emerge.
To perform a thematic analysis
• Collect text/turn recordings into text through transcription (writing it down)
• Read text/transcripts first to spot patterns that can be coded and collected.
• Re-read the transcriptions/codes looking for emergent themes.
Evaluation
Thematic analysis
✅
• High external validity
• Easy to get a sample
• Easy to replicate
Evaluation
Thematic analysis
❌
•Subjective interpretation.
• Data not created in controlled conditions
Important point to not about thematic analysis
+ evaluation ✅
-It is important when writing about thematic analysis that you make clear the themes are not pre-determined by the researcher but come from/emerge from the text.
✅
• As theories come after the discovery of themes, it can be argued thematic analysis stops the researcher imposing their own bias on the analysis by only looking for what they want to see.
