1. Presented by: Eric S. Riley
Content Analysis
Presented by:
Eric S. Riley

2. What we’re going to cover – Fast…
What is Content Analysis
Rough History of Content Analysis
The Procedure
Step by Step procedural analysis of Lynch & Smith

3. What is Content Analysis
A form of textual analysis *usually*
Categorizes chunks of text according to Code
Blend of qualitative and quantitative
Schwandt, Thomas A. Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry. 2nd ed. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, 2001.

4. Rough History - 1 Classical Content Analysis
Used as early as the 30’s in military intelligence
Analyzed items such as communist propaganda, and military speeches for themes
Created matrices searching for the number of occurrences of particular words/phrases
Roberts, C.W. "Content Analysis." International Encyclopedia of the Social and
Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier: Amsterdam, 2001.

5. Rough History - 2 (New) Content Analysis*
Moved into Social Science Research
Study trends in Media, Politics, and provides method for analyzing open ended questions
Can include visual documents as well as texts
More of a focus on phrasal/categorical entities than simple word counting
*My own terminology, more generally referred to as simply “Content Analysis”

6. Procedure Identifying a corpus of texts and Sample Pop.
Determine unit of analysis
Find Themes (inductive or deductive)
Build a Codebook
Mark the texts
Analyze the code from texts quantitatively
Denzin, Norman K. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications: Thousand
Oaks, CA, 2000.

7. Procedure – 1. Identifying Texts
Texts can be either
Pre-existing cultural documents
Newscasts, presidential letters, etc.
Constructed experimental documents
Responses to a survey, transcript of an interview, etc.
What were the texts from our article today?
How was the sample population derived?
What do you think about their sample?
1) Texts were the job ads from ACRL news.
2) Selected one month arbitrarily (March) and a sample from 1973, 1983, 1988, 1993 and Why the leap from 73 to 83? Why not 78?

8. Procedure – 2. Unit of Analysis
Units of analysis are variable
Depth is dependent upon the information need
What is the unit of analysis for this study?
1) The entire job ad, or is it? Could be selected portions of the job ad.

9. Procedure – 3. Find Themes
Finding themes in the content can be either
Inductive
Preconstructed solid template of categories
Deductive
Derives themes as they arise in the content
How did authors find themes?
What were their themes?
Through the literature review
Job Categories, Computing Skills, Behavioral descriptions || Organizational Structures, Electronic Resources incorporated into Reference, Changing nature of Work

10. Procedure – 4. Build a Codebook
Codebook: An organized list of codes
Details
Provides a description of the code
Often hierarchical
Inclusion/Exclusion criteria
Examples
How did our authors build their codebook?
Did they modify anything?
From previous research as outlined in the literature review.
Yes, their combo jobs in table 1 are an example of modifications.

11. Procedure – 5. Marking the Texts
By hand vs. Computer
Using the codebook, you mark the attributes of individual texts
Inter-coder consistency statistics
Do you think that we would be able to recreate this methodology?
1) perhaps. They have given us the previous definitions and their new combinations, if we recreate this study, we may well come up with similar results.

12. Procedure – 6. Analyze Code
Can be done in a table format as here
Can be done graphically in charts
Usually analyzed from multiple perspectives

13. Where we’ve been What is Content Analysis
Rough History of Content Analysis
The Procedure
Step by Step procedural analysis of Lynch & Smith

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