Main Points

What is Content Analysis?

• Content analysis is an analysis of the contents of a communication.
• Content analysis is a technique that enables researchers to study human behavior in an indirect way by analyzing communications.

Applications of Content Analysis

• Content analysis has wide applicability in educational research.
• Content analysis can give researchers insights into problems that they can test by more direct methods.
• There are several reasons to do a content analysis: to obtain descriptive information of one kind or another; to analyze observational and interview data; to test hypotheses; to check other research findings; and/or to obtain information useful in dealing with educational problems.

Categorization in Content Analysis

• Coding (categorizing) by using predetermined categories.
• Coding by use of categories that emerge as data is reviewed.

Steps Involved in Content Analysis

• In doing a content analysis, researchers should always develop a rationale (a conceptual link) to explain how the data to be collected are related to their objectives.
• Important terms should at some point be defined.
• All of the sampling methods used in other kinds of educational research can be applied to content analysis. Purposive sampling, however, is the most commonly used.
• The unit of analysis ― what specifically is to be analyzed ― should be specified before the researcher begins an analysis.
• After defining what aspects of the content are to be analyzed, the researcher needs to formulate coding categories.

Coding Categories

• Developing emergent coding categories requires a high level of familiarity with content.
• In doing a content analysis, a researcher can code either the manifest or the latent content of a communication, and sometimes both.
• The manifest content of a communication refers to the specific, clear, surface contents: the words, pictures, images, and such that are easily categorized.
• The latent content of a document refers to the meaning underlying what is contained in a communication.

Reliability and Validity as Applied to Content Analysis

• Reliability in content analysis is commonly checked by comparing the results of two independent scorers (categorizers).
• Validity can be checked by comparing data obtained from manifest content to that obtained from latent content.

Data Analysis

• A common way to interpret content analysis data is by using frequencies (i.e., the number of specific incidents found in the data) and proportion of particular occurrences to total occurrences.
• Another method is to use coding to develop themes to facilitate synthesis.
• Computer analysis is extremely useful in coding data once categories have been determined. It can also be useful at times in developing such categories.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Content Analysis

• Two major advantages of content analysis are that it is unobtrusive and it is comparatively easy to do.

The major disadvantages of content analysis are that it is limited to the analysis of communications and it is difficult to establish validity.