content analysis

Question 1

what is meant by content analysis ?

Answer 1

a method of quantifying qualitive content via coding / categorisation

Question 2

what are examples of qualitive content?

Answer 2

qualitive content include:
- sources of written information
( diaries, reports etc)

Question 3

how would you use content analysis ?

Answer 3

• you would need to look for relevant words / phrases that relate to a theme that you are studying
• you would need to count the number of times a word / phrase / theme could be counted / tallied / categorised

Question 4

what do you want to turn qualitive data into in content analysis ?

Answer 4

qualitive data into quantifiable data

Question 5

how to improve the reliability of content analysis ?

Answer 5

• researchers should agree operationalised codes / categories
• researchers could create new categories of necessary
• researchers should be trained carefully in using these identified codes / categories / words / phrases
• any improvements in reliability could be checked by establishing inter - observer reliability (moderation)
• the 2 researchers results are compared for similarity to check improvements

Question 6

what would indicate reliability ?

Answer 6

a correlation coefficient of +0.8 or above would indicate reliability