1. Quality over Quantity Prepared by: Institutional Research and Planning

2. Introduction to Content Analysis What is it, and what is it for? How is it done? Hands-on practice

3. The Starting Point Textual data: Survey comments Focus group or interview transcripts Articles Documents

4. After Content Analysis Themes or Categories: Usable to inform policy decisions, action plans, research papers etc

5. Content Analysis is … … a systematic way of organizing textual data into themes that capture meaning.

6. Levels of Analysis Words Phrases Sentences Paragraphs …

7. “More places to work. Computer labs you can’t eat in. Library you have to be quiet and cafeteria is way too noisy. Nowhere to study where you can work in a group and be able to talk without having to yell to be heard.”

8. worditout.com

9. Inductive vs Deductive Analysis Inductive  themes emerge from text Deductive  theoretical perspective or hypothesis establishes themes prior to examination of text

10. How to Do It Like reading a poem

11. First Read “just to get the gist” Get comfy and read through the whole thing. You might want a pen & notebook handy to jot down ideas about themes that are emerging as you read.

12. Second Read “testing the themes” Organize the material according to the themes you identified on the first read. Test whether they work, or if they need adjustment.

13. The Long Table Method Find a nice long table. Cut up your hard copies into units of analysis. Lay them out on the table, grouped by theme.

14. The Highlighter Method Assign each theme a colour. Highlight passages in the text that fit each theme.

15. Questions to Ask During 2 nd Read Do any of my themes feel forced – like I have to work to make the text fit? Do I have a lot of uncoded white text left over? What are the dominant colours on the page?

16. Third Read “adjustment and iteration” Adjust themes as necessary based on what you learned from the second read. Try again with the new themes. They should fit, so this should be a pleasure!

17. Intercoder Reliability, or … … the “cone of silence”

18. Practice with sample survey comments