RM- Content Analysis

Question 1

What is content analysis?

Answer 1

Content analysis is that systematic research technique for analysing data such as transcripts of interviews, documents or texts.

Question 2

How does content analysis work?

Answer 2

The data might be too large to analyse initially, so the researcher creates a coding system of pre-determined categories that can be applied to the content.

Question 3

How can coding work?

Answer 3

Coding could take the form of counting the number of times a word/phrase/behaviour appears in a source e.g how many times does the person sleep talk during the night?

Question 4

What are some strengths of content analysis?

Answer 4

• Easy technique to use and not too expensive
• Allows statistical analysis to be conducted as quantitative data is a result of the process.
• Reliable way to analyse qualitative data

Question 5

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 5

• When content analysis generates qualitative data
• E.g transcribe 30 interviews about sleeping and dreaming behaviour and might notice that themes emerge from the data we have collected, e.g “dreaming”, “snoring”
• A theme refers to an idea that reoccurs from the interviews, and they ten to be more descriptive than using coding.

Question 6

What are limitations of content analysis?

Answer 6

• Can be extremely time consuming as it would need to be repeatedly checked over to avoid errors.
• It is subject to increased error, particular when relational analysis is used to interpret.
• Only describes data and can’t extract any deeper meaning or explanation for the data patterns arising.