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Research Designs Using Content Analysis

Research Designs Using Content Analysis Klaus Weber, Northwestern University Klaus Weber demonstrates how to develop a research project using content analysis. He will also discuss reliability and validity issues.

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Terry College of Business
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758 views

Research Designs Using Content Analysis

Research Designs Using Content Analysis Klaus Weber, Northwestern University Klaus Weber demonstrates how to develop a research project using content analysis. He will also discuss reliability and validity issues.

Uploaded by

Terry College of Business
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Research Designs Using Content Analysis

Klaus Weber Northwestern University


klausweber@northwestern.edu

PDW Content Analysis in Organizational Research Academy of Management Montreal, 2010

A Definition
Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts [broadly conceived] to the contexts of their use.
Krippendorff, 2004

Technique: Systematic (reliable, valid)


Evidence based, transparency of procedure

Text: Data is generated in communication process


Author, audience, intent, context matter

Inference: Interpretative in nature, inference about social reality


Researcher, research question, theoretical constructs

Examples of how data is generated: Conversations, speeches, articles, open ended survey responses, interviews, images
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Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010

Outline

Whats in a Text? A Semiotic Framework Generic Types of Textual Analysis The Process From Collecting Data to Presenting Results Sampling, Base Rates and Control Groups Validity and Reliability Software Support

Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010

Whats in a Text? A Semiotic Perspective


Conceptual image of innovation

Sense / Concept

Text = words/images arranged in order, but of interest are often ideas or actions that the words point to The semiotic problem: words, concepts, and referents do not correspond one-to-one (the good news: associations are usually conventionally defined in a particular social context) Referent
Innovation activity in organization

Sign Unit Sign vehicle


Word in a Text e.g., innovation

-> Be clear about what the text analysis is getting at: Linguistic patterns, cognitive-cultural schemas, facts?

Solutions to the semiotic problem:


Three generic sources of meaning and interpretation:
Referential: A words meaning derives from its association with a referent or idea (e.g., categories, names) Relational: Meaning derives from a signs position to other signs (e.g., association, opposition, grammar, plots) Contextual: Meaning derives from the communication context (who created the text, for whom, when, why)
Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010 4

What Content Is Analyzed


Inductive Theory Building
Holistic interpretation (-> themes, mechanisms, taxonomies)

Quantitative Content Analysis


Small text units in isolation, e.g. categories (-> frequencies, trends, etc.)

Semantic Analysis
Relationship between content units, e.g. associations and grammar (-> scripts, networks of associated concepts, causal maps, narratives)

Computational Linguistics
Algorithm based identification of structure, e.g. latent semantic clusters (-> analogue: factor and cluster analysis; problem: interpretation)

Discourse Analysis
Several texts, e.g. regimes of interpretation (-> broad ideologies, institutional myths and political contradictions)
Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010 5

The General Process


Step
Data Generation & Collection

Activities / Decision Points


Sampling, interviews, archived documents, web content, recordings of conversations & speeches, etc. Digitalization (transcribing, OCR scans); Cleaning and Formatting, Unitization and Indexing (author, document, sentence, etc.)

Data Storage & Organization


Categorizing and Connecting Coding and Aggregation Simplification and Presentation

Category development (custom, standard); Dictionary development (custom, standard); Operational Definition of Associations
Sampling, Coding, Reliability/Validity, Aggregation of unit-level coding

Frequencies, Trends, Comparisons, Networks, Maps, MDS, Statistics, etc.

Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010

Sampling, Base Rates and Control Groups

Sampling authors
Most common

Sampling texts
No need to code every document (in most instances)

Sampling coding units


No need to code every paragraph / sentence (in most instances)

Base rates of word or category occurrence


Random is fine but often not most realistic

Control groups
Corpus linguistics Closely matched other texts

Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010

Validity and Reliability of Inference

Validity: external (generalization), internal (constructs and causality) Reliability: replication over time, across individuals
Multiple researchers for category development

Applicability of generic categories and dictionaries


Documentation (code book, dictionary) Reliability statistics: Dont use percent agreement, avoid Cohens kappa; use statistics that account for chance agreement between coders: Krippendorffs alpha, Scotts pi

Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010

Software Support Options: Some Packages


Functionality Functionality Functionality Functionality Functionality

Type of Software
Theory Building Support Coding Support

Examples of popular software


ATLAS.ti, Ethonograph, Kwalitan, MaxQDA, NVivo Diction, TextQuest, LIWC Yoshicoder WordStat AutoMap, DecisionExplorer, UCINet

Storage, retrieval
Yes
(best for smaller volumes)

Developing and linking categories


Yes
(main focus)

Automated content coding


Some
(best for smaller volumes)

Mapping, display of coded data


Some
(mostly basic)

Quantification, statistics
Little
(export to other software)

Yes

Little

Yes
(main focus, efficient for high volume)

Little

Little
(export of other software)

Mapping

Some

Little

Yes

Yes
(main focus)

Some
(e.g. concept centralities)

Text Mining

TextAnalyst, SAS plug-in, SPSS plug-in WordStat, TAKMI

Yes
(especially for large volumes)

Little

Yes

Some

Some
(e.g. built in algorithms)

Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010

A Few Key Questions To Ask

What does the content represent? How were the data generated? Are categories and measurements valid and replicable?

What is the base rate of content occurrence?


What inferences / interpretations can I actually make?

Klaus Weber, Content Analysis, Academy of Management Meeting 2010

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