Content Analysis

?
View mindmap
  • Research Methods - Content Analysis
    • Content Analysis
      • indirect study of behaviour by examining communications that people produce
        • e.g. texts, emails, TV, film & other media
          • aim: summarise & describe communication in systematic way, conclusions can be drawn
    • Coding
      • initial stage of content analysis
        • communication being studied = analysed by identifying chosen categories
          • e.g. words, sentences & phrases etc
            • some data sets being analysed are large
    • Thematic analysis
      • inductive & qualitative approach
        • identifying implicit/ explicit ideas in the data
          • themes will emerge when date coded
            • explicit/ implicit... recurrent; keeps 'cropping up'
            • once researcher happy, may collect new data to test validity
    • Strengths
      • circumnavigate  many ethical issues
      • material they might want to study may already exists
      • e.g. conversation by text has benefit of being in high external validity
      • flexible - produce qualitative and quantitative data depending on aims of research
    • Weaknesses
      • people studied indirectly - communication is analysed outside of context
      • researcher may attribute opinions/ motivations to speaker which were not intended
      • suffer a lack of objectivity
      • researcher bias

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Psychology resources:

See all Psychology resources »See all Research methods and techniques resources »