When is content analysis used

American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Ullstrom S. Suffering in Silence: a qualitative study of second victims of adverse events. Owen P. Psychiatric Services. Choosing whether to conduct a content analysis by hand or by using computer software can be difficult.

Ethnography, Observational Research, and Narrative Inquiry. Writing CSU. Colorado State University. It is comprehensive, yet succinct. It includes examples and an annotated bibliography. An introduction to qualitative research methods is available through EPIC.

Search form Search. Last Updated pm Sep 30, See Coronavirus Updates for information on returning to campus, and more. Content Analysis Overview Software Description Websites Readings Courses Overview Content analysis is a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts within some given qualitative data i.

Description Sources of data could be from interviews, open-ended questions, field research notes, conversations, or literally any occurrence of communicative language such as books, essays, discussions, newspaper headlines, speeches, media, historical documents. Three different definition of content analysis are provided below. Conceptual Analysis Typically people think of conceptual analysis when they think of content analysis.

General steps for conducting a conceptual content analysis: 1. Decide the level of analysis: word, word sense, phrase, sentence, themes 2. Option B allows the researcher to stay focused and examine the data for specific concepts. Decide on how you will distinguish among concepts: Should text be coded exactly as they appear or coded as the same when they appear in different forms?

Relational Analysis Relational analysis begins like conceptual analysis, where a concept is chosen for examination. General steps for conducting a relational content analysis: 1. Explore the relationship between concepts: once the words are coded, the text can be analyzed for the following: Strength of relationship: degree to which two or more concepts are related. Sign of relationship: are concepts positively or negatively related to each other?

Reliability and Validity Reliability : Because of the human nature of researchers, coding errors can never be eliminated but only minimized. Three criteria comprise the reliability of a content analysis: Stability: the tendency for coders to consistently re-code the same data in the same way over a period of time. Validity : Three criteria comprise the validity of a content analysis: Closeness of categories: this can be achieved by utilizing multiple classifiers to arrive at an agreed upon definition of each specific category.

Content Analysis in Communication Research. New York: Free Press, Trends in Content Analysis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Software Choosing whether to conduct a content analysis by hand or by using computer software can be difficult. The technique can be used for data in many different formats, for example interview transcripts, film, and audio recordings. It is a reliable way to analyse qualitative data as the coding units are not open to interpretation and so are applied in the same way over time and with different researchers.

It allows a statistical analysis to be conducted if required as there is usually quantitative data as a result of the procedure.

As it only describes the data it cannot extract any deeper meaning or explanation for the data patterns arising. Company Reg no: Ohio State University. Bernstein, J. Contextual coverage of government by local television news.

Journalism Quarterly, 69 2 , Blaikie, A. Images of age: a reflexive process. Applied Ergonomics, 24 1 , Craig, R. The effect of day part on gender portrayals in television commercials: a content analysis. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 26 , Dillon, D. Article content and authorship trends in The Reading Teacher, The Reading Teacher, 45 5 , Eberhardt, EA. The rhetorical analysis of three journal articles: The study of form, content, and ideology.

Ellis, B. The computer knows: applying grammar-program statistics in content analyses to solve mysteries about authorship. The application of computerized content analysis in a psychiatric outpatient clinic.

Journal of Clinical Psychology, 53 5 , Graham, J. Journal of Advertising , 22 2 , Herzog, A. The B. Factor: The theory and technique of faking it in America. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Horton, N. Young adult literature and censorship: A content analysis of seventy-eight young adult books. Isaacs, J. A verbal content analysis of the early memories of psychiatric patients. Berkeley: California School of Professional Psychology.

Jean Lee, S. Rhetorical vision of men and women managers in Singapore. Human Relations, 46 4 , Kaur-Kasior, S. The treatment of culture in greeting cards: A content analysis. Koza, J. The missing males and other gender-related issues in music education: A critical analysis of evidence from the Music Supervisor's Journal, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

San Francisco. Laccinole, M. Aging and married couples: A language content analysis of a conversational and expository speech task. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon. Lewis, S. Regulation from a deregulatory FCC: Avoiding discursive dissonance. Norton, T. The changing image of childhood: A content analysis of Caldecott Award books. Los Angeles: University of South Carolina.

O'Dell, J. Computer content analysis of the Schreber case. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 49 1 , Pratt, C. Comparative content analysis of food and nutrition advertisements in Ebony, Essence, and Ladies' Home Journal. Journal of Nutrition Education, 27 1 , Roberts, S. A content analysis of how male and female protagonists in Newbery Medal and Honor books overcome conflict: Incorporating a locus of control framework. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas.

Schneider, J. Square One TV content analysis: Final report. New York: Children's Television Workshop. Smith, T. Ethnographic content analysis of couple and therapist perceptions in a reflecting team setting. The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 20 3 , Stahl, N.

Developing college vocabulary: A content analysis of instructional materials. Reading, Research and Instruction , 26 3. Swetz, F. Fifteenth and sixteenth century arithmetic texts: What can we learn from them? Science and Education, 1 4.

Abernethy, A. The information content of advertising: a meta-analysis. Journal of Advertising, Summer 25 2 , Extracting, representing and analyzing mental models. Social Forces , 70 3 , Fan, D. Predictions of public opinion from the mass media: Computer content analysis and mathematical modeling.

Franzosi, R. Computer-assisted coding of textual data: An application to semantic grammars. Sociological Methods and Research, 19 2 , McTavish, D. Quality and Quantity , 24 , Palmquist, M. The lexicon of the classroom: language and learning in writing class rooms. Two applications of automated text analysis: Analyzing literary and non-literary texts. Roberts Ed. Roberts, C. Other than counting words: A linguistic approach to content analysis.

Social Forces, 68 , Jolliffe, L. More content analysis! If there is a large volume of texts, you can select a sample. Next, you need to determine the level at which you will analyze your chosen texts.

This means defining:. Your units of analysis are the politicians who appear in each article and the words and phrases that are used to describe them. Based on your research question, you have to categorize based on age and the concept of trustworthiness. To get more detailed data, you also code for other categories such as their political party and the marital status of each politician mentioned. Coding involves organizing the units of meaning into the previously defined categories.

You go through each text and record all relevant data in the appropriate categories. Following your coding rules, you examine each newspaper article in your sample. You record the characteristics of each politician mentioned, along with all words and phrases related to trustworthiness that are used to describe them. Once coding is complete, the collected data is examined to find patterns and draw conclusions in response to your research question. You might use statistical analysis to find correlations or trends, discuss your interpretations of what the results mean, and make inferences about the creators, context and audience of the texts.

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