Methodology: Content Analysis Flashcards
Define ‘content analysis’.
A form of data analysis for qualitative data with communication between people that may also involve quantitative data when looking at number of times words appear.
What is the difference between content and thematic analysis?
Thematic analysis is strictly qualitative whereas content analysis can be both qualitative and quantitative.
What is data that has already been created?
Artefacts.
What is the purpose of a content analysis?
To make analysis more objective and to simplify the detection of trends.
Give 2 examples of content analysis.
1) Investigating gender stereotypes in films through analysing what is said between characters
2) Investigating whether adverts aimed at boys differ from adverts aimed at girls through analysing their content
How is content analysis conducted?
Through analysing themes within data by organising rich data and counting phrases or words in a text through categorisation.
Define ‘inductive’ content analysis.
The qualitative method in which clusters of themes are identified through studying documents, recordings, etc.
Define ‘deductive’ content analysis.
Having predetermined ideas of the themes that may be present in a text and so create a list of words that are tallied every time said.
List the 3 different types of content analysis.
1) Frequency analysis
2) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPS)
3) Summative content analysis
Define ‘frequency analysis’.
The number of times certain words appear in a text, providing quantitative data, such as the number of times sexual references appear in a day.
Define ‘interpretative phenomenological analysis’.
Identifying emergent themes by ordering and organising themes into clusters, providing qualitative data.
Define ‘summative content analysis’.
Combines both quant and qual methods that involves tallying frequency of words creating a manifest content. Categories are defined by identified with key words in the sources and are based on researchers preconceptions. This is then followed by the interpretation of underlying context.
Why 4 reasons might someone choose content analysis?
1) Practical
- Saves cost and time due to secondary data
2) Sensitive topics
- Secondary data does not upset ppts as clinical interviews would
3) One-off event
- Opportunity to look at something that may not normally happen such as 9/11
4) Easier to find appropriate sample
- Appropriate ppts may not be available otherwise and so can look at previous sources such as Holocaust victim accounts
Give 5 strengths of content analysis.
1) Reliable way to analyse qual data due to coding units not being open to interpretation and so are consistently applied in same way but is also reliable due to quant
2) High ecological validity due to being based on real life
3) High inter-rater reliability if multiple people decide on the categories
4) Practical due to easy technique and not time consuming
5) Highly valid if double-blind is used to reduce researcher bias by hiding aim so that they don’t look for things to bias results
Give 5 weaknesses of content analysis.
1) Low validity as qualitative data is subjective to biased interpretation
2) Can be culture dependent
3) Low validity due to ambiguous language that could be misinterpretted
4) Low content validity due to coding system actually measuring what the researcher intends to measure
5) Causality cannot be established as it only describes the data
