0% found this document useful (0 votes)
5 views9 pages

Content Analysis

Content analysis is a qualitative research method used to analyze written or visual materials to identify specific characteristics and study human behavior indirectly. It involves coding, categorizing, and interpreting data from various sources, making it applicable in educational research for understanding trends, attitudes, and cultural patterns. While it offers advantages such as unobtrusiveness and ease of replication, it also has limitations regarding the validity of interpretations and reliance on recorded information.

Uploaded by

Puji Ana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
5 views9 pages

Content Analysis

Content analysis is a qualitative research method used to analyze written or visual materials to identify specific characteristics and study human behavior indirectly. It involves coding, categorizing, and interpreting data from various sources, making it applicable in educational research for understanding trends, attitudes, and cultural patterns. While it offers advantages such as unobtrusiveness and ease of replication, it also has limitations regarding the validity of interpretations and reliance on recorded information.

Uploaded by

Puji Ana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 9

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

CONTENT ANALYSIS
Lecturer:
Dr. TOYYIBAH, M.Pd.

Compiled by:
Risma Aprilya (932211618)
Rosi Hertanto (932210818)
Wafiq Fadylla N. A. (932212118)
Puji Ana Astutik (932204118)

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF EDUCATION TEACHERS TRAINING
STATE INSTITUTE FOR ISLAMIC STUDIES (IAIN)
KEDIRI
2021
1
CONTENT ANALYSIS

A. WHAT IS CONTENT ANALYSIS?

Content analysis is a research method applied to written or visual materials for the
purpose of identifying specified characteristics of the material. Content analysis is a
technique that enables researchers to study human behavior in an indirect way by
analyzing communications.The materials analyzed can be textbooks, newspapers, web
pages, speeches, television programs, advertisements, essays, novels, magazine articles,
musical compositions, or any of a host of other types of documents. Content analysis is
widely used in education.Content analysis as a methodology is often used in conjunction
with other methods, in particular historical and ethnographic research. It can be used in
any context in which the researcher desires a means of systematizing and (often)
quantifying data. It is extremely valuable in analyzing observation and interview data.

Content analysis can also be used to supplement other, more direct methods of
research. Attitudes toward women who are working in socalled men’s occupations. For
example, can be investigated in a variety of ways: questionnaires; in-depth interviews;
participant observations; or content analysis of magazine articles, television programs,
newspapers, films, and autobiographies that touch on the subject. Content analysis can be
used to give researchers insights into problems or hypotheses that they can then test by
more direct methods. A researcher might analyze the content of a student newspaper, for
example, to obtain information for devising questionnaires or formulating questions for
subsequent in-depth interviews with members of the student body at a particular high
school.

B. HOW DOES CONTENT ANALYSIS WORK ?


Content analysis starts with a sample of texts (the units), defines the units of analysis
(e.g. words, sentences) and the categories to be used for analysis, reviews the texts in
order to code them and place them into categories, and then counts and logs the
occurrences of words, codes and categories. From here statistical analysis and
quantitative methods are applied, leading to an interpretation of the results. Put simply,
content analysis involves coding, categorizing (creating meaningful categories into which
the units of analysis – words, phrases, sentences etc. – can be placed), comparing

2
(categories and making links between them), and concluding – drawing theoretical
conclusions from the text.
C. APPLICATIONS OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
Content analysis is a method that has wide applicability in educational research.
For example, it can be used to:
1. Describe trends in schooling over time (e.g., the back-to-basics movement) by
examining professional and/or general publications.
2. Understand organizational patterns (e.g., by examining charts, outlines, etc., prepared
by school administrators).
3. Show how different schools handle the same phenomena differently (e.g., curricular
patterns, school governance).
4. Inferattitudes,values,andculturalpatternsindifferent countries (e.g., through an
examination of what sorts of courses and activities are—or are not—sponsored and
endorsed).
5. Compare the myths that people hold about schools with what actually occurs within
them (e.g., by comparing the results of polls taken of the general public with literature
written by teachers and others working in the schools).
6. Gain a sense of how teachers feel about their work (e.g., by examining what they have
written about their jobs).
7. Gain some idea of how schools are perceived (e.g., by viewing films and television
programs depicting same).

D. CATEGORIZATION IN CONTENT ANALYSIS


All procedures that are called content analysis have certain characteristics in common.
These procedures also vary in some respects, depending on the purpose of the analysis
and the type of communication being analyzed.There are two ways that this might be
done:
1. The researcher determines the categories before any analysis begins. These categories
are based on previous knowledge, theory, and/or experience. For example, later in this
chapter, we use predetermined categories to describe and evaluate a series of journal
articles pertaining to social studies education.
2. The researcher becomes very familiar with the descriptive information collected and
allows the categories to emerge as the analysis continues.

3
E. STEPS INVOLVED IN CONTENT ANALYSIS
The steps involved in a content analysis, there are :
1. Specifying the phenomenon to be investigated (such as gender role stereotyping).
2. Selecting the media from which the observations are to be made (such as the
Caldecott Medal books for specified time periods).
3. Formulating exhaustive and mutually exclusive coding categories so that the verbal or
symbolic content can be counted (such as the categories in which gender role
stereotyping could occur).
4. Deciding on the sampling plan to be used in order to obtain a representative sample of
the documents (such as the sample consisting of all the Caldecott winners for two 2-
year periods). You might decide to look at three issues per week of a newspaper over
a period of 1 year, for instance, or every issue of a weekly newsmagazine for 1 year.
5. Training the coders so that they can consistently apply the coding scheme that has
beendeveloped and thus contribute to the reliability of the content analysis. Some
coding is not so straightforward but may require inferences about whether a minority
group, for example, is being portrayed positively or negatively. Several coders should
be able to code the documents using the scheme and obtain consistent results. If the
interrater reliability is satisfactory, you can proceed to the next step. If it is less than
satisfactory, the coders may be useful in revising the category definitions to make
them clearer and more complete.
6. Analyzing the data, which may involve just the frequencies and percentages in the
various categories or may involve more descriptive accounts.
A researcher must decide on the specific objectives want to achieve.There are several
reasons why a researcher might want to do a content analysis.
1. To obtain descriptive information about a topic. Content analysis is a very useful way
to obtain information that describes an issue or topic. For example, a content analysis
of child-rearing practices in different countries could provide descriptive information
that might lead to a consideration of different approaches within a particular society.
Similarly, acontent analysis of the ways various historical events are described in the
history textbooks of different countries might shed some light on why people have
different views of history.

4
2. To formulate themes (i.e., major ideas) that help to organize and make sense out of
large amounts of descriptive information. Themes are typically groupings of codes
that emerge either during or after the process of developing codes.
3. To check other research findings. Content analysis is helpful in validating the findings
of a study or studies using other research methodologies. Statements of textbook
publishers concerning what they believe is included in their company’s high school
biology textbooks (obtained through interviews), for example, could be checked by
doing a content analysis of such textbooks. Interviews with college professors as to
what they say they teach could be verified by doing a content analysis of their lesson
plans.
4. To obtain information useful in dealing with educational problems. Content analysis
can help teachers plan activities to help students learn. A content analysis of student
compositions, for example, might help teachers pinpoint grammatical or stylistic
errors. A content analysis of math assignments might reveal deficiencies in the ways
students attempt to solve word problems. While such analyses are similar to grading
practices, they differ in that they provide more specific information, such as the
relative frequency of different kinds of mistakes.
5. To test hypotheses. Content analysis can also be used to investigate possible
relationships or to test ideas. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that social
studies textbooks have changed in the degree to which they emphasize the role of
minority individuals in the history of our country. A content analysis of a sample of
texts published over the last 20 years would reveal if this is the case.

F. CODING CATEGORIE

In doing a content analysis, a researcher can code either or both the manifest and the
latent content of a communication.

1. Manifest Content
The manifest content of a communication refers to the obvious, surface
content—the words, pictures, images, and so on that are directly accessible to the
naked eye or ear. No inferences as to underlying meaning are necessary. To
determine, for example, whether a course of study encourages the development of
critical thinking skills, a researcher might simply count the number of times the word
thinking appears in the course objectives listed in the course outline.Coding the

5
manifest content of a document has the advantage of ease of coding and reliability—
another researcher is likely to arrive at the same number of words or phrases counted.
It also lets the reader of the report know exactly how the term thinking was measured.
On the other hand, it would be somewhat suspect in terms of validity. Just counting
the number of times the word thinking appears in the outline for a course would not
indicate all theways in which this skill is to be developed, nor would it necessarily
indicate “critical” thinking.
2. Latent Content
The latent content of a document, on the other hand, refers to the meaning
underlying what is said or shown. To get at the underlying meaning of a course
outline, forexample, a researcher might read through the entire outline or a sample of
pages, particularly those describing the classroom activities and homework
assignments to which students will be exposed. The researcher would then make an
overall assessment as to the degree to which the course is likely to develop critical
thinking. Although the researcher’s assessment would surely be influenced by the
appearance of the word thinking in the document, it would not depend totally on the
frequency with which the word (or its synonyms) appeared.Coding the latent content
of a document has the advantage of getting at the underlying meaning of what is
written or shown, but it comes at some cost in reliability. It is likely that two
researchers would assess differently the degree to which a particular course outline is
likely to develop critical thinking. An activity or assignment judged by one researcher
as especially likely to encourage critical thinking might be seen by a second
researcher as ineffective.

G. RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY AS APPLIED TO COTENT ANALYSIS


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

H. 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. You will note that we use these statistics in the analysis of social studies

6
research articles that follows. In content analysis studies designed to explore relationships, a
crossbreak table or chi-square analysis is often used because both are appropriate to the
analysis of categorical data. 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.Computer usage in
content analysis, these can be used to do the following :

- store and check (e.g. proofread) data


- collate and segment data and to make numerous copies of data
- enable memoing to take place, together with details of the circumstances in which the
memos were written
- conduct a search for words or phrases in the data and to retrieve text
- attach identification labels to units of text (e.g. questionnaire responses), so that
subsequent sorting can be undertaken
- annotate and append text
- partition data into units that have been determined either by the researcher or in
response to the natural language itself
- enable preliminary coding of data to be undertaken O
- sort, resort, collate, classify and reclassify pieces of data to facilitate constant
comparison and to refine schemas of classification
- code memos and bring them into the same schema of classification
- assemble, reassemble and recall data into categories
- undertake frequency counts (e.g. of words, phrases, codes)
- cross-check data to see if they can be coded into more than one category, enabling
linkages between categories to be discovered
- establish the incidence of data that are contained in more than one category
- retrieve coded and noded data segments from subsets (e.g. by sex) in order to compare
and contrast data
- search for pieces of data that appear in a certain (e.g. chronological) sequence
- establish linkages between coding categories
- display relationships of categories (e.g. hierarchical, temporal, relational,
subsumptive, superordinate)
- quote data in the final report

7
I. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
1. ADVANTAGES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
- A major advantage of content analysis is that it is unobtrusive. A researcher can
“observe” without being observed, since the contents being analyzed are not
influenced by the researcher’s presence. Information that might be difficult, or even
impossible, to obtain through direct observation or other means can be gained
unobtrusively through analysis of textbooks and other communications, without the
author or publisher being aware that it is being examined.
- Another advantage of content analysis is that, as we have illustrated, it is extremely
useful as a means of analyzing interview and observational data.
- Content analysis is that the researcher can delve into records and documents to get
some feel for the social life of an earlier time. He or she is not limited by time and
space to the study of present events.
- Accrues from the fact that the logistics of content analysis are often relatively simple
and economical—with regard to both time and resources—as compared to other
research methods. This is particularly true if the information is readily accessible, as
in newspapers, reports, books, periodicals, and the like.
- Lastly, because the data are readily available and almost always can be returned to if
necessary or desired, content analysis permits replication of a study by other
researchers. Even live television programs can be videotaped for repeated analysis at
later times.
2. DISADVANTAGES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
- A major disadvantage of content analysis is that it is usually limited to recorded
information, although theresearcher may, of course, arrange the recordings, as in the
use of open-ended questionnaires or projective techniques. One would not be likely to
use such recordings to study such variables as proficiency in calculus, Spanish
vocabulary, or the frequency of hostile acts because they require demonstrated
behaviors or skills.
- The other main disadvantage is in establishing validity. Assuming that different
analysts can achieve acceptable agreement in categorizing, the question remains as to
the true meaning of the categories themselves.

8
- Sometimes there is a temptation among researchers to consider that the interpretations
gleaned from a particular content analysis indicate the causes of a phenomenon rather
than being a reflection of it.

REFERENCES :

Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., Sorensen, C. K., & Razavieh, A. (2010). Introduction to Research in
Education. Canada, MA: Cengage.

Cohen, L., Manion, L., Morrison, K. (2007). Research Method in Education. USA :
Routledge.

Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E. (2009). How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education.
New York, McGraw-Hill.

You might also like