Research Tools (Content Analysis)

1. CONTENT ANALYSIS
• M’hamed Jamili
• Sanae Lafif
• Youssef Idrissi
Prepared and delivered by:

2. • Definition
• Materials analyzed
• Types of content analysis
• Uses of content analysis
• Procedures of content analysis
• Advantages Vs. Limitations
• Review (Video)
• References
OUTLINE:

3. CONTENT ANALYSIS:
DEFINITION

4. What is Content Analysis ?
It is a qualitative research technique/ tool that focuses on the actual content and
internal features of a text.
It’s a Technique or tool of studying meanings, contexts and intentions contained
in messages (texts)
It measures references, attitudes, themes, and characteristics of messages in
texts
It is an objective, systematic, description of manifest content

5. Content Analysis studies materials rather than people
directly.
What are these Materials ?!!

6. Conversations
Editorials
Interviews
Facebook updates
Research articles
Adverts
Diary entries
Speeches
Historical documents
Newspaper Articles
Books
Tweets
Magazine TV
Book chapters

7. CONTENT ANALYSIS
USES

8. USES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
 Perhaps due to the fact that it can be applied to examine any piece of
writing or occurrence of recorded communication, content analysis is
currently used in many fields, ranging from marketing and media studies, to
literature and rhetoric, ethnography and cultural studies, gender and age
issues, sociology and political science, psychology and cognitive science,
and many other fields of inquiry.
 Fields of Influence:
 Marketing and media
 Literature
 Ethnography and cultural studies
 Sociology and political sciences
 Psychology and cognitive science

9.  Content analysis reflects a close relationship with socio- and psycholinguistics,
and is playing an integral role in the development of artificial intelligence. The
following list (adapted from Berelson, 1952) offers more possibilities for the
uses of content analysis:
■ Reveal international differences in communication content
■ Detect the existence of propaganda
■ Identify the intentions, focus or communication trends of an individual, group or institution
■ Describe behavioral responses to communications
■ Determine psychological or emotional state of persons or groups

10. CONTENT ANALYSIS
TYPES

11. TYPES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
■ Unobstursive Research:
Research that does not collect data directly from people.
■ Conceptual analysis:
Analyzing the existence and frequency of concepts in human
communication.
■ Relational analysis:
Analyzing the relationship between concepts in human
communication.

12. Examples:
■ Conceptual analysis means establishing the existence and frequency of
concepts – most often represented by words of phrases – in a text. For
instance, if we said that your favorite writer often writes about hunger.
With conceptual analysis you can determine how many times words
such as “hunger,” “hungry,” or “starving” appear in a volume of poems. In
contrast, relational analysis goes one step further by examining the
relationships among concepts in a text.
■ Returning to the “hunger” example, with relational analysis, you could
identify what other words or phrases “hunger” or “starving” appear next
to and then determine what different meanings emerge as a result of
these groupings.

13. Example:
 Lets answer the following questions:
1. The type of actor?
2. The gender of actor?
3. Age of actor?
4. Size of person?
5. Emotional content

14. CONTENT ANALYSIS
PROCEDURES

15. PROCEDURES
 Step 1:
- Concrete research question (relevance to praxis, eventually hypotheses,
formulation and explication of preconceptions).
 Step 2:
- Linking research question to theory (state of the art, theoretical approach,
preconceptions for interpretations).
 Step 3:
- Definition of the research design (explorative, descriptive, co-relational,
causal, mixed).
 Step 4:
- Defining of the (even small) sample or material and the sampling strategy.

16.  Step 5:
- Methods of data collection and analysis, pilot tested.
 Step 6:
- Processing of the study, presentation of results in respect to the research
question.
PROCEDURES

17. CONTENT ANALYSIS
ADVANTAGES
Vs.
DISADVANTAGES

18.  Content analysis is readily-understood.
 Inexpensive research Method.
 It is unobtrusive and it doesn’t require contact with people.
 When it is combined with other research methods such as interviews,
observation and the use of archival record it becomes a powerful tool.
 Establishing reliability is easy and straightforward.
 Content analysis scores highest with regard to ease of replication.
 Usually the materials can be made available for others to use.
ADVANTAGES

19. ■ Content analysis is a purely descriptive method. It describes what is there,
but may not reveal the underlying motives for the observed pattern ('what'
but not 'why').
■ Time consuming.
■ Prone to bias and subjectivity.
■ Information can be lost due to the poor selection of categories.
LIMITATIONS

20. REVIEW
Everything you need to know about Content-Analysis

22. REFERENCES:
http://www.psychopen.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/books/mayring/ssoar-
2014-mayring-
Qualitative_content_analysis_theoretical_foundation.pdf
http://psc.dss.ucdavis.edu/sommerb/sommerdemo/content/strengths.
htm