content analysis

• Content analysis

  Indirectly studying/observing human behaviour through things we produce (books, TV ads, newspaper)
• Content analysis limitations

  • Deciding on categories and quotations can be subjective therefore researcher bias
  • Difficult to decide whether statement or example fits into particular categories therefore inaccuracies with categories
  • People studied indirectly outside of the context that it occurred therefore unjustified assumptions on original speaker/writer's intentions
  • Categories may not reflect reality therefore meaningless results therefore low mundane realism and low external validity
• Content analysis strengths

  • Unobtrusive - indirect study therefore can avoid ethical violations
  • Deals with secondary data therefore ethical issues are minimised, low cost and material already in public domain
  • Allows for quantitative/qualitative research therefore is flexible
  • Qualitative into quantitative data therefore can be used for inferential statistics
• Content analysis: coding

  First stage in which large data sets are categorised into meaningful units to produce quantitative data. eg: counting number of times (event sampling) a word or phrase appears