L1 - Content Analysis & Coding: Thematic Analysis

Question 1

What is a content analysis

Answer 1

• This is an observational research method whereby people/sources/behaviour are studied directly or indirectly (speech, texts, books, TV, behaviours etc.)
• Content analysis aims to summarise and describe the communication in a systematic way so that conclusions can be drawn, e.g. is there an optimum amount of hours to sleep during the night in order to function effectively?

Question 2

Content analysis method

Answer 2

1) Sampling: Decide how the material/behaviour should be sampled.
• Time sampling - (every 5 minutes log information)
• Event sampling - (log the event as it happens, e.g. night terror)
2) Record data: How will you record data?
In a table? Video? Write everything down?
3) Analyse/ categorise data - how will you summarise the data? Will it be quantitative or qualitative?
4) Tally up the amounts

Question 3

Content analysis

Answer 3

• a systematic research technique for analysing data such as transcripts for interviews, documents or texts.
• data may be too large to analyse initially, so the researcher creates a coding system of pre determined categories that can be applied to the content.
• pilot study is often used to test the coding system/categories to ensure they do not overlap but are separate.

Question 4

Coding

Answer 4

Coding could take the form of counting the number of times a word/phrase/behaviour appears in a source, e.g. how many times does the person “sleep talk” during the night. This would generate quantitative data for the researcher to analyse

Question 5

Thematic analysis & qualitative data

Answer 5

• Content analysis can also generate qualitative data e.g may want to transcribe 30 interviews about sleeping and dreaming behaviour. Once the data has been coded, may notice that themes emerge from the data we have collected, e.g. “dreaming” “snoring” or “interrupted sleep”.
• If the researcher is happy that the themes identified cover most aspects of the data that has been collected, they may want to collect a new set of data about “sleep eating” to compare the new themes and categories that have been identified.
• This therefore explains the idea of, “thematic analysis.” This will increase the validity of the content analysis overall.

Question 6

What’s a theme?

Answer 6

A theme refers to an idea that reoccurs from the interviews, and they tend to be more descriptive than using coding.

Question 7

Strengths of content analysis

Answer 7

• produces reliable data, if repeated in the future, similar/consistent results
• can produce quantitative data, allows for trends and patterns to be identified
• highly reliable technique that makes data easier to analyse
• easy technique to carry out and isn’t too time consuming compared to other techniques like interviews

Question 8

Weaknesses of content analysis

Answer 8

• not scientific/objective
• can’t establish cause & effect as it just describes/categories the data
• can be invalid as are we really sure categories/themes are really measuring the effect of the IV on DV
• Hard to operationalise categories