Content Analysis

Question 1

Coding & example

Answer 1

Categorising information and placing it into meaningful units e.g. counting the number of times a word/phrase appears, then tallying it to make it quantitate data

Question 2

Thematic analysis

Answer 2

A theme that refers to any idea that keeps appearing e.g. the mentally ill could be described as “a drain” or “a threat to wellbeing”, which can then be categorised into themes e.g. stereotyping, which is qualitative data

Question 3

Non-experimental technique

Answer 3

Content analysis is a non-experimental technique - it is a type of observation

Question 4

Strengths of content analysis

Answer 4

High mundane realism because either is based on real communications that are current e.g. recent newspapers - therefore it also has high ecological validity as CA is real life behaviour

Involves secondary data so it has few ethical issues and makes it possible to study people you normally wouldn’t be able to get into direct contact with

Question 5

Weaknesses of content analysis

Answer 5

Subjective interpretation of the data (researcher bias) which can affect the objectivity of the findings

May be a culture bias in the interpretation of verbal or written content, interpretation of verbal / written content will be affected by the language and culture of the observer, which may lead to the content being misinterpreted