Content analysis

• Content analysis

  Indirect observation of an artefact, such as interviews, magazines, articles or diaries. Usually involves changing qualitative data into quantitative by identifying themes
• Main features

  • indirect observation of an artefact
  • involves identifying categories or themes in an artefact
  • turns qualitative into quantitative by occurrence of theme/categories
  • can also produce qualitative data
  • artefacts sampled through opportunity
• Designing

  1. Create an aim and hypothesis for study
  2. read/view the artefact
  3. identify theme/categories
  4. reread and tally every time a theme/category appeares
  5. present quantitative data in grap/table or describe how the categories are presented in the artefact
• Evaluation-strengths

  • high ecological validity as it’s based on real life communication therefore findings can be generalised beyond setting of study
  • easy to assess reliability of findings and conclusions since researchers can access the same materials and use coding systems to find consistency
• Evaluatio-weaknesses

  • researcher bias as judgment about applying content of artefact to category is subjective and a researcher may interpret content in order to confirm hypothesis, lowers internal validity
  • hard to establish cause and effect as it only describes data and not conducted under controlled experimental conditions, reduces internal validity