Content analysis

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Content analysis
B.Sc. Health Sciences B.Sc. Sport Studies

• Dr. Edwin van Teijlingen
• Department of Public Health

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Todays lecture

• Essay questions
• Content Analysis
• Exercise using Content Analysis
• Home work

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Essay questions HE3010 / HE3014

• More people pick up a tennis racket around
  Wimbledon is on than any other time similarly
  people are more likely to go cycling in
  Continental Europe around the time of the Tour de
  France. Explain how you, as the researcher,
  could combine qualitative and quantitative
  methods to study this issue.
• Critically assess principles and practicalities
  involved in choosing between qualitative and
  quantitative methods to examine students'
  attitudes towards cycling to university.
• Analyse problems involved in designing a survey
  questionnaire to examine either
• Students attitudes towards participating in
  sport, or
• Students attitudes towards healthy eating
• Discuss possible ethical issues in a qualitative
  methods study of drug misuse among junior doctors
  in Scotland.

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Content Analysis (CA)

• Objectives
• By the end of this session students should be
  able to
• list strengths weaknesses of CA
• give examples of studies using CA
• conduct an exercise in analysing content.

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Content Analysis

• What is it?
• Who uses it?
• What are strengths and weaknesses?
• What different types are there?

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Content Analysis is

• a research method, using a systematical
  description and analysis of the content of
  recorded (usually written) material.
• "any research technique for making inferences by
  systematically and objectively identifying
  specified characteristics within text
  Stone et al. 19665.

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How to do CA I

• Franzosi (2004 550) in the Handbook of data
  analysis (edited by Hardy Bryman) highlighted
  that
• one of the most common approaches to content
  analysis is thematic analysis, where the coding
  is based on categories design ..

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How to do CA II

• Themes are results in qualitative research that
  are ideas or concepts that are implicit in the
  data and are recurrent throughout the data
  abstractions that reflect phrases, words or ideas
  that appear repeatedly as a researcher analyzes
  what people have said about a particular
  experience, feeling, or situation. Macnee
  McCabe 2008 424.

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How to do CA III

• Content analysis classifies many words in the
  text with a shared meaning into much fewer
  categories, i.e. it aims to code and comprehend a
  large number sets of (related) text. To make
  "valid inferences from the text, it is important
  that the classification procedure be reliable in
  the sense of being consistent Different people
  should code the same text in the same way." Weber
  199012

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Content Analysis Who uses it?

• Content analysis is often used in analysis of
  communication media, for example analyses of
  stories, images, messages in newspapers,
  leaflets, etc.

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Content Analysis examples

• Media, originally studies of USA newspaper to get
  some insight in changing opinions in society.
• Coding of replies to open-ended questions on
  questionnaires
• Alcohol use in soap operas on television

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CA open-ended questions

• Question about place of residency in Nepal
• Where do you live at present?
• District
• -------------xxx---------------
• Question to health care professionals in
  Scotland
• What type of physical activity are you most
  likely to recommend to your patients who are
  apparently healthy adults? (e.g. walking,
  cycling, swimming, etc.) ________
• __________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________

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Content Analysis examples

• Example of alcohol use in soap operas on British
  television. The video recorded as terrestrial TV
  for specified period and systematically selected
  days. General results an awful lot of references
  are being made to alcohol, pubs, etc. on British
  television.
• (Smith, C. et al.,1988)

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Content Analysis

• Why use it?
• produces statistical data
• it is relatively easy and cheap to carry out
• it limits researcher effect
• it monitors recent events
• results may be tested or compared by repeating
  the analysis

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Problem associated with Content Analysis

• representativeness of samples
• how objective are the categories used?
• problems can arise from coding up of material
• purely quantification is descriptive not
  analytical
• fails to address issues of qualitative methods
  meaning and significance
• analysis of contents is not telling about
  audience response

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Content Analysis

• Coding down
• making data fit pre-defined categories
• Coding up
• deriving categories from the data collected.

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Content Analysis

• Coding up
• let categories emerge from data
• redefine categories
• link categories
• identify common themes and their exceptions
• produce a framework of understanding

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Introduction to Class exercise

• Statements such as The Sun has more gossip than
  The Daily Record imply that you have somehow
  counted or otherwise measured the content of
  these two papers and compared their individual
  counts, what ever your unit of measurement might
  be e.g. articles, headlines, pictures or column
  inches.

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Class exercise

• Content Analysis
• Exercise question
• Which of the three tabloid newspapers
• contains more on positive health?

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Content Analysis

• Analysing content of newspapers, issues to
  consider
• What are your criteria of measurement?
• What are you criteria for inclusions/exclusion?
• I.e. what do you define as health (messages)?
• Include only text / text and photos/ etc.?

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References

• Haggarty, L., 1996, What is .. content
  analysis?, Medical Teacher, 18, pp.99-101
• Krippendorff, K., 1980, Content Analysis An
  Introduction to Its Methodology, London Sage
• Macnee, CL McCabe S., 2008, Understanding
  Nursing Research (2nd edn) , London Wolters
  Kluwer
• Morgan, D.L., 1993, Qualitative Content
  Analysis A Guide to Paths Not Taken,
  Qualitative Health Research, 3, pp.112-121
• Smith, C. et al.,1988, The portrayal of alcohol
  on British television a content analysis Health
  Education Research, 3, pp.267-72
• Stone, P.J., et al., 1966, The General Inquirer
  A Computer Approach to Content Analysis,
  Cambridge, Mass. The M.I.T. Press
• Weber, R.P. 1990, Basic Content Analysis (2nd
  edn), London Sage

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Home work

• Read
• Consider various issues around the mini-project.