Research Methods: Content Analysis And Thematic

Question 1

Outline what is meant by content analysis.

Answer 1

• A type of research that studies behaviour indirectly through their communications.
• E.g diaries, interview transcripts, transcribed phone conversations.
• A technique for analysing qualitative data using quantitive techniques.
• E.g toilet graffiti and counting the instances of particular types of graffiti. The graffiti itself is qualitative data but the method of analysis involves counting so qualitative data is turned into quantitative.

Question 2

Outline how to conduct content analysis.

Answer 2

1. Explain the researcher will identify coding categories. These are specific types of communication the coders will look for when they read through the data.
2. Give an example of possible category. The best way to write these is “ reference to…” .
3. The researcher will repeatedly look through the data and spot examples of the coding categories.
4. The researcher will count/tally the number of instances of each of the categories.
5. This quantitative data can be represented in a chart.

Question 3

Outline what is meant by thematic analysis.

Answer 3

• A type of research that studies behaviour indirectly through their communications.
• Like content analysis, thematic analysis is used to study qualitative data, but unlike content analysis the data is analysed qualitatively, by identifying themes within the data.
• E.g analysing the talk of single women and identifying a theme of ‘singing as independence’.

Question 4

Outline how to conduct thematic analysis.

Answer 4

1. Familiarisation with the data – the researcher immerses themselves in the data by intensely reading,
   watching etc
2. The researcher looks to identify ideas that reoccur in the data. These ideas could be explicitly stated or they
   might be implicit (i.e., the researcher infers they are there).
3. The analyst should seek to group the ideas together into themes. These are broad categories that the
   researcher interprets as being important in the data.
4. Give an example of a theme that might be found in the data in the stem.
5. The researcher would then write a report of their findings (i.e., as qualitative data), including direct quotes
   to highlight the themes identified

Question 5

What are Similarities between Thematic analysis and Content analysis?

Answer 5

• Both analyse qualitative data – Develop this point with examples of communications that can be studied and
explain why these are qualitative.

Question 6

What are some Differences between Thematic and Content analysis?

Answer 6

• Content analysis can analyse data quantitatively whilst thematic analysis is entirely qualitative – Develop with examples
• Content analysis is more descriptive (e.g., counting instances of sexual graffiti in toilet graffiti) and thematic
analysis is more interpretative (e.g., identifying the theme of ‘independence’ involves the analyst interpreting what women say when they discuss singleness).

Question 7

Content analysis and thematic analysis always have high ecological validity.

Answer 7

This is because they both are usually used to analyse qualitative data from real-life communications (e.g., letters,
newspapers, adverts etc), rather than data artificially produced for a study. This means research findings from
content/thematic analysis may be more generalisable to the real world.

Question 8

What is a limitation of thematic analysis?

Answer 8

It lacks scientific credibility due to being subjective. This is because in thematic analysis the researchers have to analyse the data to identify the themes within it. This
process requires a significant degree of interpretation, which can result in observer-bias (e.g., the researcher seeing
what they want/hope to see in the data). Therefore, thematic analysis is subjective and therefore unscientific.

Question 9

What is a limitation of content analysis?

Answer 9

That is can only access the manifest content within communication data. Manifest content refers to what is manifest (I.e., evident/obvious) on the surface. Because content analysis relies
only on counting instances of types of communication, this can describe what the data appears to show, but it may
easily miss the latent content, meaning deeper meanings that are hidden below the surface. For example, counting the number of swearwords in a book reveals nothing about the meaning behind the use of swearwords.

Question 10

What is a strength of thematic analysis?

Answer 10

It can access the latent content within data. Because thematic analysis requires the researcher to interpret the data, they can go beyond just describing what
people communicate and instead explain what they meant to communicate. This means thematic analysis is good at
accessing the latent content of communication data, meaning it can detect the hidden meanings below the surface.

Question 11

What is a strength of content analysis?

Answer 11

It has scientific credibility as it is an easily replicable method. Content analysis is easily replicable as once the researcher has generated their coding categories and specified
the data they have analysed, another team of researchers can easily re-analyse the data with the same coding categories, and so determine if the results are replicable