What is a content analysis?
It’s a research technique used in psychology to analyse recorded information. It is a quantitative approach and can be conducted on any form of recorded media.
Give 5 examples of what content analysis’ can be done on
Newspapers
Diaries
Music
Videos
Tv adverts
What are the strengths to content analysis’?
-easily repeated
-can turn qualitative data into quantitative data
What are the weaknesses to content analysis’?
They can suffer from researcher bias. It is also reliant on the quality of the material- if it isn’t very realistic (lacks real world validity) then the analysis won’t be very realistic.
what are the 5 steps to conducting a content analysis?
- pick your recorded media
- choose your categories (4-5)
- create a tally chart with a column for each category. (mutually exclusive, exhaustive, no ambiguousness)
- watch the adverts and tick each time that you see one of the categories in an advert.
- write a report on your findings of the content analysis, including a bar chart or table of the frequencies you found.
define test re-test
testing reliability by repeating the content analysis
define inter-rater reliability
using another researcher to conduct the same analysis with the same categories / material. If the researchers obtain the same results the study is said to be reliable.
what are the 8 possible categories that can be used in a content analysis?
capturing attention
slogans
classical conditioning/association
music
storyline
celebrities, endorsement
links to other media
jingles
define thematic analysis
An in-depth report on the main themes in written and recorded information, just like identifying the main themes in a novel.
What’s the difference between quantitative and qualitative data?
quantitative - numbers and quantities, easier to analyse
qualitative- words, feelings, opinion + anything rich in detail- harder to analyse
What’s the main issue with thematic analysis’?
They are often very subjective as researchers have different judgments- leading to a lot of bias in the final report.
what can be done to deal with the subjective bias in thematic analysis’?
researchers can often include a short statement at the start about their own beliefs/ viewpoints, so that the reader can place the report into the context of the researcher.
what are the strengths to thematic analysis’?
- lots of detail, keeps data in rich detail format.
- likely to have higher ecological validity- real ideas thoughts and feelings,.
what are the weaknesses to thematic analysis’?
- very time consuming
- more likely to be subjective
-hard to replicate as a researcher may choose different themes to another
What is the alternative if qualitative data can not be reported?
The data can be turned into quantitative data and a content analysis can be run.
