Content Analysis Flashcards
Content Analysis
Content analysis is a form of indirect observation – indirect as the researcher is not observing people directly but the artefacts they have produced.
Artefacts can include books, magazines, TV programmes, films, diaries and songs. They can also include verbal communications from interviews, presentations or discussions.
Some researchers analyse artefacts that have already been produced; other researchers conduct content analysis on materials that they have asked people to produce specifically for the investigation.
Content analysis using artefacts that have already been produced
*Investigating aggression in television programmes.
*Studying how males and females were portrayed in lonely hearts adverts in newspapers.
*Analysing graffiti gathered from toilet
Content analysis using artefacts that people produce specifically for the investigation
*Asking student nurses to make notes in a diary so that researchers could identify the most effective features of a nurse mentor.
How does a researcher do content analysis
A researcher must make two main design decisions when conducting a content analysis:
- What sampling method should be used to select the behaviour to study? For example which TV programmes or lonely hearts adverts to choose.
- How will the data be
analysed? Using coding via quantitative analysis or themes via qualitative analysis?
5 step process of conducting a Content Analysis
- Data collected
- Researcher reads through or examines the data, making themselves familiar with it
- The researcher identifies coding units
- The data is analysed by applying the coding units
- A tally is made of he number of times that a coding unit appears
coding
In content analysis first stage involves CODING. This involves the researcher choosing behavioural categories. To help researchers decide how to code behaviour, they look through all the data beforehand.
Once behavioural categories have been selected, researchers look through all the data and record the number of examples within each category.
For example, investigating aggression in television programmes may involve counting how many acts of coded aggression were observed in TV programmes at particular times of the day. They may then compare the number of aggressive acts shown in the morning compared to later on in the evening.
Thematic analysis
One way to generate qualitative data is through THEMATIC ANALYSIS.
This tends to be a very lengthy process. The researcher will initially spend time looking through the data to get a ‘feel’ for what has been collected. The emphasis is very much on themes being generated from the data, rather than from the researcher’s expectations and beliefs.
A theme is any idea (whether obvious or assumed) that keeps occurring in the data. Themes tend to be much more descriptive than the behavioural categories used in a quantitative content analysis. For example, investigating aggression in television programmes may result in themes such as aggression with intent to psychologically harm, or aggression arising from feelings of jealousy.
Once a researcher has decided that the themes cover all aspects within the data, they will then collect more data to test the accuracy of these themes. If the themes cover all aspects within the second set of data, then the research will be written up and where appropriate, will include quotes and examples from the data to support the themes identified.
Checking the reliability of a Content Analysis
The analysts analyse the material independently from each other, but using the same coding units. The frequencies are then compared to see the degree of agreement. This is then formally tested by correlating the results. If there is a correlation coefficient of +0.8, then the analyses are reliable.
Evaluating Content / Thematic Analysis, strengths
Content analysis using artefacts that have already been produced can be a very ethical way to conduct research. If the artefacts are in the public domain (eg TV adverts) permission does not have to be sought.
High ecological validity: it is based on observations of real artefacts produced by people.
As long as the sources are retained by the researcher, reliability of the data analysis can be assessed and it could be replicated
It is a flexible way to conduct research as it can lead to both quantitative and qualitative data analysis.
Evaluating Content / Thematic Analysis, limitations
Possibility of observer bias: different observers may interpret data differently. The artefacts may also be studied outside of the context in which they were produced leading researchers to add their own interpretations of the data. This leads to the data analysis being subjective and is a particular issue with thematic analysis.
Cultural bias: the interpretation of verbal or written content will be affected by the language and culture of the observer. This is a particular issue with quantitative content analysis whereby the researcher’s culture may influence how data is coded and which behaviour categories are used.
Thematic analysis in particular is very
difficult to replicate as each reading of the text is unique.
