CONTENT ANALYSIS

Content Analysis

Content Analysis

Introduction

Content analysis is a fundamental method based on data generated from human observers' judgment by recording or transcribing the textual, visual, or audible messages in human communication. The method has been widely used in various disciplines: communication and journalism, marketing, education, psychology, anthropology, and other social science subjects. The researcher in 1988 suggested that content analysis was introduced in more than three fourths of research method courses at the master's level. In addition, there has been a growth in scholarly publications of content analysis: more than 2,000 results of published journal articles would emerge by searching content analysis between the year 2001 and 2011 from Communication Abstracts. Therefore, all the issues related to Content Analysis will be discussed in detail.

Discussion

Outline

As a quantitative research method, the most essential advantages of this scientific research method are that it provides accurate insight of communication content, and its replicability. However, because lacking of a standard reliability measure in content analysis, a growing concern of quality and creditability of content analysis studies has been debated in many methodology studies.

Research Questions

In order to help with reliability in content analysis, some researchers provided guidelines and recommendations for enhancing quality of work, in terms of calculating coefficients of and reporting inter coder reliability. Content analysis is a systematic research method for examining symbolical content in communication by recording or transcribing these messages into categories. This method is the study of recorded human communications. It is one significant technique in quantitative research and social sciences because it is an unobtrusive technique that enables researchers to examine messages in view of the meanings, symbolic qualities, and expressive contents under certain contexts. Compared to other quantitative research, content analysis is more focused on validity and reliability. Researchers employ content analysis methodology to study texts, images, and expressions that are created to be seen, read, interpreted, and acted on for their meanings.

Unit of Analysis

The researcher known as Janis in 2009 classified this research technique into three categories: pragmatically content analysis, semantically content analysis, and sign-vehicle analysis. Pramatical content analysis is the procedure in which messages are categorized by their possible causes or effects. Semantical content analysis is the procedure that classifying messages based on their meanings. Sign-vehicle analysis measures what it purports to measure: the frequency occurrence of a given sign-vehicle (Holsti, 1969, 71).

Unit of Measurement

The most essential advantages of this scientific research method are that it provides accurate insight of communication content and its replicability. Benefits of using content analysis method to approach communication research are (1) content analysis can be used as an unobtrusive measure of communications while direct methods might involve bias; (2) content analysis offers potentials for examining effects of various message-content on recipients' responses (3) content analysis initiates new research on specific subjects of communication; and (4) content analysis can be employed in multi method research. Although content analysis is specifically appropriate for and has been widely used in mass communication and journalism, applications of the study method ...