Mary Jackson Pitts, Ph.D.
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Mary Jackson Pitts, Ph.D.
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Download in word.Content analysis (Holsti)
Content
analysis
is any technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively
identifying specified characteristics of messages.
Qualitative
content analysis
n
which
has sometimes been defined as the drawing of inferences on the basis of
appearance or non appearance of attributes in messages.
Used a lot in applied social science.
i.e. predicting enemy moves according to past action.
Quantitative
content analysis
n
gives
strict enumeration of the content examined.. Very rigorous...Used perhaps to
examine news values among gatekeepers.
Content Analysisn Various types of content designu Characteristics of communicationContent analysisn To make inferences as to the antecedents of communication (encoding)Content analysisn To make inferences as to the effects of communication (decoding)How do you do a content analysis?n
As
with any study you must identify what you wish to measure and the purpose of the
study. You must determine whether
you want to describe the attributes of a message, make inferences about the
content by asking who or why and by making inferences about the effects of
messages. Once you have identified what you want to measure, you may then
proceed with preparing to conduct the content analysis.
Content Analysisn
To
do a content analysis
n
Content
analysis stands or falls by its categories.
u
Ask
how is the research problem defined in terms of categories?
ie. subject matter..direction...origin..target...etc
Definitions of categories requires that they actually represent the
elements of the investigators theory...: that they be exhaustive, to ensure that
every item relevant to the study can be classified: and that they be mutually
exclusive so that no item can be scored more than once within a category set.
To insure results which are replicable, the investigator must specify
explicitly the indicators that determine which unites fall into each category. Define categories by characterizing their major properties.
Content Analysisn Procedures for content analysisu 1. Select a topicu 2. Decide sampleu 3. Define concepts or unites to be countedu 4. Construct categoriesu 5. Create coding formu 6. Train codersu 7. Collect dataWhat unit of content is to be classified?u What are your recording units?u What is your context unit?u Quantification of identified unitsEnumeration
n
Now
you must deal with the system of enumeration.... The recording unit and the unit
of enumeration may be the same...
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