content analysis

• Content analysis

  An indirect observational method where we observe human behaviour through the things humans make (artifacts)
• Quantitative data

  • Can make tables, charts, work out averages and do statistics on it
• Qualitative data

  Data in the form of words
• Content analysis

  1. Decide research question

  2. Select sample

  3. Identify coding units/behavioral categories

  4. Operationalise categories

  5. Record in frequency table
• Artifacts for content analysis

  • 1950's advertisements
  • Art of the middle ages
  • Films from the late victorian age
  • Greek pots
• Content analysis allows us to give a quantitative description of qualitative human communication
• Coding units/behavioral categories

  • Linked to research question, need to be operationalised (defined so they can be precisely measured)
• Waynforth and Dunbar (1995) conducted a content analysis on 881 lonely heart adverts from 4 American newspapers
• Evolutionary theory of mate choice

  Men look for younger, attractive mates as indicators of fertility; Women look for older mates with resources to provide for a family
• The content analysis backed up the evolutionary theory - men looked for significantly younger mates and women looked for significantly older mates
• Men showed off their resources more than women, while women mentioned their own attractiveness more than men
• Conducting a content analysis

  1. Decide measurable categories to record

  2. Tally each time a category appears

  3. Check reliability through test-retest or inter-rater reliability
• Test-retest reliability

  Running the content analysis again on the same data and comparing the results
• Inter-rater reliability

  Two researchers complete the content analysis separately using the same operationalised categories, then compare the results
• Researchers generally accept a correlation coefficient of 0.8 between the ratings as showing the data is reliable
• Strengths of content analysis

  • High external validity as the material was not created for research
  • Easy to get a sample as the data already exists
  • Replication is possible
• Weaknesses of content analysis

  • Possibility of observer bias
  • Lack of validity as the data is not a record of actual behaviour
• Thematic analysis

  A variation on content analysis where the researcher starts by attempting to discover deeper meanings in the text/interviews, identifying emergent themes rather than using predetermined categories
• Thematic analysis is intended to stop the researcher imposing their own ideas on the texts