Content and thematic analysis

Question 1

What is the definition of content analysis?

Answer 1

Used to systematically summarise written, spoken and/or visual communication in a quantitative way.

Question 2

Describe the process of content analysis.

Answer 2

Data collection.
Researcher familiarises themselves with data.
Identifies coding units.
Tally made of number of times each coding unit appears.

Question 3

(AO3) Why does content analysis have high ecological validity?

Answer 3

Based on observations of what people actually do or say. Real communications that are current and relevant e.g. newspapers.

Question 4

(AO3) What are the limitations of content analysis?

Answer 4

Lacks reliability - subjective categories.
Culture bias - interpretation of content will be impacted by culture and language.

Question 5

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 5

A highly inductive process that enables a researcher to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of the data and empathise with the person, group, situation, organisation or culture.

Question 6

Describe the process of thematic analysis.

Answer 6

Repeatedly read data to understand meaning communicated and perspective of participants.
Assign labels to each meaningful independent section of the data (e.g. a phrase labelled as anger).
Combine simple codes into bigger themes then count frequency of instances.
Does not need to produce qualitative data as the purpose is to gain a deep understanding.

Question 7

(AO3) What is a strength of thematic over content analysis?

Answer 7

More in-depth, gaining a broader understanding of a concept.

Question 8

(AO3) What are the limitations of thematic analysis?

Answer 8

Very time consuming.
Even more subjective than content analysis.
Does not produce data that can easily be analysed.