RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

476 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND GROUNDED THEORY
describe the relative frequency and importance of
certain topics as well as to evaluate bias, prejudice
or propaganda in print materials.
Weber (1990: 9) sees the purposes of content
analysis as including the coding of openended
questions in surveys, the revealing of
the focus of individual, group, institutional and
societal matters, and the description of patterns
and trends in communicative content. The
latter suggestion indicates the role of statistical
techniques in content analysis; indeed Weber
(1990: 10) suggests that the highest quality
content-analytic studies use both quantitative and
qualitative analysis of texts (texts defined as any
form of written communication).
Content analysis takes texts and analyses,
reduces and interrogates them into summary form
through the use of both pre-existing categories
and emergent themes in order to generate or test
a theory. It uses systematic, replicable, observable
and rule-governed forms of analysis in a theorydependent
system for the application of those
categories.
Krippendorp (2004: 22–4) suggests that there
are several features of texts that relate to a
definition of content analysis, including the fact
that texts have no objective reader-independent
qualities; rather they have multiple meanings and
can sustain multiple readings and interpretations.
There is no one meaning waiting to be discovered
or described in them. Indeed, the meanings
in texts may be personal and are located in
specific contexts, discourses, and purposes, and,
hence, meanings have to be drawn in context.
Content analysis, then, describes the manifest
characteristics of communication (Krippendorp
2004: 46) (asking who is saying what to
whom, and how), infers the antecedents of the
communication (the reasons for, and purposes
behind, the communication, and the context of
communication: Mayring 2004: 267), and infers
the consequences of the communication (its
effects). Krippendorp (2004: 75–7) suggests that
content analysis is at its most successful when it
can break down ‘linguistically constituted facts’
into four classes: attributions, social relationships,
public behaviours and institutional realities.
How does content analysis work
Ezzy (2002: 83) suggests that 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 (categories
and making links between them), and concluding
– drawing theoretical conclusions from the
text.
Anderson and Arsenault (1998: 102) indicate
the quantitative nature of content analysis when
they state that ‘at its simplest level, content
analysis involves counting concepts, words or
occurrences in documents and reporting them in
tabular form’. This succinct statement catches
essential features of the process of content
analysis:
breaking down text into units of analysis
undertaking statistical analysis of the units
presenting the analysis in as economical a form
as possible.
This masks some other important features
of content analysis, including, for example,
examination of the interconnectedness of units
of analysis (categories), the emergent nature
of themes and the testing, development and
generation of theory. The whole process of content
analysis can follow eleven steps.
Step 1: Define the research questions to be
addressed by the content analysis
This will also include what one wants from
the texts to be content-analysed. The research
questions will be informed by, indeed may be
derived from, the theory to be tested.