Lecture #9 Content Analysis

Content Analysis

  • Research method that entails the systematic and thematic analysis of cultural products

    • Aims to make visible explicit and implicit themes embedded in cultural products

    • Goal: To elucidate the social and political contexts in which cultural products are generated

  • Classified as a type of secondary data analysis

  • Can employ quantitative and qualitative techniques

Sampling in Content Analysis

  • May sample and analyze different types of texts/artifacts (e.g., TV Commercials, sitcom episodes, YouTube videos, websites, tweets, newspaper, articles)

  • Sometimes possible to employ probability sampling

Manifest and Latent Content

  • Manifest content: explicit themes communicated in a cultural product

  • Latent Content Underlying or implicit themes communicated in a cultural product

What to Look For

  • Important figures

  • Words/phrases that convey (explicitly or implicitly) particular themes and outlooks (e.g., values, bias, ideological disposition)

  • Venue/setting in which artifact/cultural product appears

  • Creator of artifact/cultural product

How to do Content Analysis

  1. Select the cultural product and theme you wish to study

  2. Determine how you will obtain a sample of the relevant material

  3. Operationalize key concepts

  4. Devise a data management system (e.g., coding sheets)

Willis & Carlson (1993)

  • Interested in gender and class differences in singles ads placed by men and women in 1986 and 1991; interested to learn the extent to which these differences have remained consistent over time

  • Independent variables: (1) sex; (2) class (3) time

  • Dependent variables: attributed sought and offered in single ads

  • Research design? Unit of Analysis?

Hypotheses

  • “Men would be more likely to offer financial assets and seek attractiveness, while women would be more likely to offer attractiveness and seek financial assets”

  • “Ads placed by men and women would be more similar in the present (1991) than they had been in the past”

Operationalization of Class and Time

  • Class: Selection of one newspaper with an affluent readership; selection of a second newspaper with a wider readership

  • Time: Ads taken from issues of two newspapers in 1986 and 1991

Sample

  • Probability sampling employed - combination cluster/stratified sample

  1. Selection of two newspapers

  2. 3 issues of each newspaper for 1986 and 1991 randomly selected 100 ads per gender were selected from each newspaper in each year

  3. Total n=800 singles ads

Data Analysis

  • Must develop coding categories and a coding sheet

  • Must ensure that coding sheet has:

    • Mutually exclusive and exhaustive independent variable categories

    • Exhaustive coding categories on dependent variable(s) (in the case of the Willis & Carlson analysis, coding categories need to serve as indicators of gender roles)

Coding Sheet for Willis & Carlson Study

Willis & Carlson Findings

  • Gender differences highly pronounced in singles ads

  • Traditional gender roles reflected in ads: men offered financial support and sought attractiveness; women offered attractiveness and sought financial security

  • Men found to be more likely to mention age, height,, and weight

  • Contrary to researchers’ hypothesis, ads in 1991 reflected greater traditional gender roles t than 1986 ads

  • Some class differences found, but the influence of this variables requires further investigation

Advantages of Content Analysis

  • Comparatively time & cost efficient

  • Unobtrusive and non-reactive methodology

  • Can conduct historical and longitudinal analyses

  • Transparent (replicable)

  • Sampling elements/materials/artifacts can be obtained with relative ease

    • Diverse range of media materials available for study

  • Probability sampling possible

  • Can employ quantitative and qualitative analyses

  • Ethics clearance usually not required

Disadvantages of Content Analyses

  • Validity of analysis contingent on quality and quantity of documents/materials/artifacts

  • Uncovering latent content is subjective process generalizability

Ethics in Social Research

  • Sources of Ethical Issues

    • Social research problem itself

    • research setting

    • procedures required by research design

    • method of data collection

    • type of data collected

    • Study population

  • Informed Consent

    1. Competence

    2. Volunteerism

    3. Full information

    4. Comprehension

  • Privacy

    1. Handling sensitive information

    2. Site of data collection/setting being observed

    3. Dissemination of information

  • Other Ethical Concerns

    • Potential harm to participants/subjects

    • Deception