Behavioral Research Methods

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• Behavioral Research Methods
• MIS 611b
• Content Analysis

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What is content analysis?

• A systematic description of behavior, artifacts,
  speech, or text using categorization.
• Involves (a) coding qualitative data into
  categories and (b) doing quantitative and
  qualitative analysis of the coded data.
• Examples of coded data
• Verbal and nonverbal turn-taking behavior during
  conversation
• Mitigation in cockpit crews
• Deception

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Step 1. Choose data

• Natural or laboratory data (e.g., conversation in
  natural setting vs. verbal responses to an
  experimental task)
• Behavior observed discretely or in sequence
• Example all topics people raise in conversation
  vs. topics raised first, second, third, etc.
• If in sequence, behavior can be event-recorded or
  time-recorded sampled or continuous.

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Step 2. Devise codes

• Theory - top down (such as the Bales system for
  group dynamics)
• Data - bottom up (look for relevant behaviors to
  code from your themes and research interests)
• Combination of two is most common.
• Simple is better! (Lots of examples of wonderful
  but lost, unusable data)

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Step 3. Unitize

• Divide the data into parts that can be coded.
  Examples
• lines in a transcript
• speaker turns in a meeting
• complete thoughts (best done in text)
• Have two people do a portion so you can check
  that each found the same number of parts
  (reliability).
• Discuss and resolve disagreement.

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Step 4. Pretest and code

• Train coders and create a code book.
• Pretest and use codes to decide how you will
  analyze your data.
• Determine reliability of your coding scheme
  (e.g., Cohens Kappa).
• Now you are ready to code. . .