Content Analysis

Question 1

What is it?

Answer 1

Type of observation looking at artefacts produced by people instead of looking at live behaviours.

Sample includes artefacts rather than people. The sample must be representative.

Question 2

Coding

Answer 2

Coding is categorising information and placing it into meaningful units. It produces quantitative data.

E.g. Count number of times a word appears in an artefact, then tallying it to get a number

Question 3

Thematic Analysis

Answer 3

Creating themes to identify in an artefact that keep appearing. It produces qualitative data.

E.g. Identifying a theme of stereotyping when the mentally ill are described as “crazy” and “a threat” in an article

Question 4

Evaluation of using content analysis

Answer 4

ADVANTAGES:
-High mundane realism as based on real current communications e.g. newspapers
-High ecological validity as researching real life behaviour
-Few ethical issues as only involves secondary data
-Possible to study hard to reach people as no direct contact with participants is needed

DISADVANTAGES:
-Relies on subjective interpretations so is subject to researcher bias which affects the objectivity of findings
-May be culture bias as interpretation depends on culture of observer, so content may be misinterpreted