1. Foundations of Sociological Inquiry
Content Analysis

2. Today’s Objectives What is Content Analysis? Units of Analysis
Sampling & Coding
Strengths and Weaknesses of content analysis
Questions?

3. Content Analysis
the study of recorded human communications (i.e., books, websites, paintings, laws).
“Who says what, to whom, why, how, and with what effect?”

4. Which of the following can be studied with content analysis?
books
magazines
websites
all of the above

5. Identify the Unit of Analysis:
You are interested in how children’s literature portrays gender roles.
You are interested in popular film’s use of drugs and alcohol.
You are interested in sociology textbook definitions of race.
You are interested in the content of Internet Blogs.

6. Units of Analysis

7. _____ are the individual units that we make descriptive and explanatory statements about.
Units of analysis
Artifacts
Groups
All of the above

8. Being clear on the unit of analysis in content analysis has particular implications for
measuring latent content.
measuring manifest content.
determining the ideal types.
selecting a sampling strategy.
coding the data

10. What type of sampling is used in content analysis?
simple
random
stratified
all of the above
none of the above

11. Sampling
Conventional sampling techniques may be used for content analysis.
Random Sampling
Stratified Sampling

12. In the content analysis of ______ , sampling may occur at any or all of several levels.
written prose
television
the internet

13. Coding
the process whereby raw data are transformed into a standardized form suitable for machine processing and analysis.
Manifest Content – the concrete terms contained in a communication.
Latent Content – the underlying meaning of communication

14. systematic reduction. analytic induction. analytic deduction.
Gigi did a content analysis of school board meeting minutes to determine who was the most influential. She developed an initial hypothesis that men carried more power, but she then searched her data to find all the cases that would contradict her initial hypothesis. This process is
known as
systematic reduction.
analytic induction.
analytic deduction.
corroboration.
systematic deduction

15. Strengths and Weaknesses of Content Analysis
Economy of time and money
Allowing for the correction of errors
Permits the study of processes occurring over time
Research has little (if any) effect on subjects
Reliability

16. Strengths and Weaknesses of Content Analysis
Economy of time and money
Allowing for the correction of errors
Permits the study of processes occurring over time
Research has little (if any) effect on subjects
Reliability
Weaknesses
Limited to recorded communications
Validity

17. Content analysis is not appropriate for
evaluating census data.
want ads.
diary entries.
messages.
newspapers.

18. In conducting content analysis research, ethical issues can arise from
how we collect the data.
protecting the privacy of individuals/organizations.
analyzing the data.
a and b
all of the above

19. Questions?