Clinical Practical

Question 1

What was your practical investigation for clinical psychology?

Answer 1

How do different online news sources portray mental health?

Question 2

What is content analysis

Answer 2

A technique for analysing QUALITATIVE data. It transforms qualitative data into quantitative data

Question 3

Describe the process of content analysis

Answer 3

1. Research Question and hypothesis
   •As with any research project the researchers start with a research question and sometimes a hypothesis.
   • This shapes the way the research is done and helps in choosing appropriate materials and coding units.
2. Sampling
   • The material of interest is first defined, for example, music videos, blogs by adolescents, children’s television, transcripts from a series of interviews etc.
   • Then the researchers must decide how much of the available information will be analysed.
   • To analyse all of the available information could be a massive undertaking so more usually they need to select a sample from it.
3. Coding units - creating the categories
   • The researchers must decide how to categorise the material to be analysed to best answer their research question.
   • These are known as coding units (or categories) and can be at many different levels.
4. Pilot Studies
   BEFORE starting - researchers must:
   a Become familiar with the types of material likely to be encountered
   • Improve the system chosen for categorising the data.
   • Researchers can be trained.
   • Categories can be more fully defined and understood.
5. Collecting the Data
   This is done in two main ways:
   a) Record the number of occurrences in a particular coding category (frequencies counts). Researchers need to create an easy to use checklist or tally chart. This produces frequency counts in categories. (nominal level data)
   b) Alternatively, coders may rank items. E.g. scenes in a film may be ranked for the level of violence on a 1-10 scale.
   (ordinal level data).

Question 4

What are the strengths of a content analysis

Answer 4

Strengths
• Turns qualitative data into quantitative data which can be statistically analysed
• Can help draw out main trends in data
• High external validity:
investigating something that is seen in the real world (e.g. newspapers)
• Easy to replicate: standardised procedures
• No human participants so fewer ethical issues

Question 5

What are the weaknesses of content analysis

Answer 5

• Researcher effects - content to be analysed is chosen by the researcher, as are the codes and categories. This reduces validity.
• Sample of materials to be content analysed may be unrepresentative of the real world.
• Describes “what” happened, not
“why”

• Cannot show cause and effect

Question 6

What is the title of your clinical practical

Answer 6

• A content analysis of how schizophrenia is portrayed by a UK tabloid newspaper compared to a UK broadsheet newspaper.

Question 7

What was the aim of your clinical practical

Answer 7

The aim of my research was to investigate whether news
articles in an online tabloid newspaper portray schizophrenia differently to articles in an online broadsheet newspaper..

Question 8

What is the alternate hypothesis of your clinical practical

Answer 8

o Schizophrenia will be portrayed differently (positively, linked to raising awareness, negatively - linked to crime, or neutrally - scientific information) in British online tabloid newspapers compared to British online broadsheet newspapers. Websites sampled will be a broadsheet newspaper (the Guardian) and a tabloid newspaper (the Sun).

Question 9

What is the null hypothesis of your clinical practical

Answer 9

• Schizophrenia will be portrayed differently (positively, linked to raising awareness, negatively - linked to crime, or neutrally - scientific information) in British online tabloid newspapers compared to British online broadsheet newspapers. Websites sampled will be a broadsheet newspaper (the Guardian) and a tabloid newspaper (the Sun).

Question 10

Summarise the ethical issues related to your practical project:

Answer 10

Most of the ethical issues had no risk since the practical involves counting data rather than using human participants. Students also worked in groups so that any ethical issues could easily be discussed.

Question 11

Name the sources which you used in your content analysis and explain how they were selected

Answer 11

• CONTENT SAMPLING
• A pilot study was conducted to test the categories and train researchers in the coding system.
g Websites of two UK newspapers were used.
They were chosen as each newspaper served a different demographic. The Guardian is considered to be one of the more intellectual papers. The Sun on the other hand can be categorised a more sensationalised tabloid
• Both newspapers have searchable websites, making it easier to sample their content.
• The first ten articles which were shown in response to the search term “schizophrenia” were content-analysed.

Question 12

What were the coding categories in your clinical practical

Answer 12

• Schizophrenia linked to crime (negative)
• Scientific information about schizophrenia (neutral)
• Aim to raise awareness of schizophrenia (positive)

Question 13

Give a strength of your practical investigation

Answer 13

P: One strength of my practical project was that it changed qualitative data into quantitative data. This is a strength because it allowed us to use statistical analysis to investigate differences in the way that three online news sources portray mental illness.
E: This is shown where we performed a content analysis on newspaper articles, using three categories:
• Schizophrenia linked to crime (negative)
o Scientific information about schizophrenia (neutral)
• Aim to raise awareness of schizophrenia(positive)

Question 14

Give a weakness of your practical investigation

Answer 14

• One weakness of the study is that the data collected was from small sample of newspapers. These were the Daily Mail and the Guardian.
o This is a weakness because the results about the portrayal of schizophrenia which we found may not be generalised to all the newspapers. For example we didn’t look at the Times or the Telegraph, because the online editions of both papers were behind a paywall.
• To improve this, the data could be collected from a wider sample of newspapers, representing the different demographics.