What is Content Analysis?

• Content analysis is an analysis of the contents of a communication.
• Content analysis is a technique that enables researchers to study human behavior in an indirect way by analyzing communications.

Applications of Content Analysis

• Content analysis has wide applicability in educational research.
• Content analysis can give researchers insights into problems that they can test by more direct methods.
• There are several reasons to do a content analysis: to obtain descriptive information of one kind or another; to analyze observational and interview data; to test hypotheses; to check other research findings; and/or to obtain information useful in dealing with educational problems.

Categorization in Content Analysis

• Coding (categorizing) by using predetermined categories.
• Coding by use of categories that emerge as data is reviewed.

Steps Involved in Content Analysis

• In doing a content analysis, researchers should always develop a rationale (a conceptual link) to explain how the data to be collected are related to their objectives.
• Important terms should at some point be defined.
• All of the sampling methods used in other kinds of educational research can be applied to content analysis. Purposive sampling, however, is the most commonly used.
• The unit of analysis ― what specifically is to be analyzed ― should be specified before the researcher begins an analysis.
• After defining what aspects of the content are to be analyzed, the researcher needs to formulate coding categories.

Coding Categories

• Developing emergent coding categories requires a high level of familiarity with content.
• In doing a content analysis, a researcher can code either the manifest or the latent content of a communication, and sometimes both.
• The manifest content of a communication refers to the specific, clear, surface contents: the words, pictures, images, and such that are easily categorized.
• The latent content of a document refers to the meaning underlying what is contained in a communication.

Reliability and Validity as Applied to Content Analysis

• Reliability in content analysis is commonly checked by comparing the results of two independent scorers (categorizers).
• Validity can be checked by comparing data obtained from manifest content to that obtained from latent content.

Data Analysis

• A common way to interpret content analysis data is by using frequencies (i.e., the number of specific incidents found in the data) and proportion of particular occurrences to total occurrences.
• Another method is to use coding to develop themes to facilitate synthesis.
• Computer analysis is extremely useful in coding data once categories have been determined. It can also be useful at times in developing such categories.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Content Analysis

• Two major advantages of content analysis are that it is unobtrusive and it is comparatively easy to do.
• The major disadvantages of content analysis are that it is limited to the analysis of communications and it is difficult to establish validity.