Content Analysis Flashcards
What is content analysis?
- Used to analyse qualitative data (non-numerical)
- Allows researcher to turn qualitative data into quantitative data
What are the main aims of Content analysis?
- Impose kind of order
- Ensure the order represents the participants perspective
- Ensure order is seen in data
- Enable themes to be identified
What are the 5 steps to content analysis?
Step 1.
- Initial qualitative should be analysed in order for popular behaviour categories to emerge
Step 2.
- Create behavioural categories such as themes or behaviours which relate to overall behaviour being analysed
Step 3.
- Turn qualitative data into quantitative data and keep a tally frequency of behavioural categories
Step 4. Turn quant back into qual data, tally up results and turn them into a qual format
eg. Men said young 11 times = Men are more interested in younger romantic partners
Step 5.
- Check data, find more data for what’s being analysed and do the same thing again to see if the themes emerge again
What are 2 strengths of content analysis?
High in ecological validity
- Based on observations of what people actually do and uses real data such as newspapers, books, interviews
Can be easily replicated
- Especially when using text or videotapes as these sources can be easily retained or accessed by others and be analysed again
What is a weakness of content analysis?
Researcher bias
- Researchers may interpret the meaning of behaviour differently to other observers which will reduce validity of findings
- Important to have more than 1 observer and est. inter-rater reliability
