The Use of Content Analysis

nitty-gritty abbreviation is a research technique for the

objective, systematic, and quantitative description

of the manifest content of communication.

Content analysis is any research technique for making

references by systematically and objectively identifying

specified characteristics within text.

In the consequent discussion, we propose to use the

terms "content analysis" and " cryptograph" interchangeably,

to refer to the objective, systematic, and quantitative

description of any symbolic behavior.

Now, let us code these according to the rate of usage of each ingredient of three boy pairs: quantitative/qualitative, systematic/nonsystematic, and objective/ unverifiable:

Document Quanti Quali System Nonsys Objective Sub

tative tative atic tematic jective

1... 1 1 1

2... 1 1

3... 1 1 1

What have we learned in this simple study? Two of the three texts used the word "quantitative," while all three used "systematic" and "objective." none used any of the words "qualitative," "nonsystematic," or "subjective." Even without real reading the definitions, we could infer strongly that the definers were "biased" in respect of the quantitative, the systematic, and the o

It is possible, however, to go far beyond such(prenominal) simple word recites or appearancecounts. In some cases, it is in like manner necessary to do so. Suppose, for example, we wanted to cut how much reference was made to death chair Bush in various newspapers or other media. We cannot simply count repetitions of of the phrase, " chair Bush," because he is not always referred to that way. We must also count references to "the President," to "Bush," to "Reagan's VicePresident," to adjectives that refer back to him, and so forth.

We must also be c arful to weed out references to someone or something else, e.g., "the President [of Iraq]," "Bush [league sports]" and so forth. Such distinctions generally are highly objective, in that all observers will be in high agreement as to which references are actually to President Bush.

tative tative atic tematic jective

Analyses that depend on the identification of positive or prohibitly charged references depend critically on whose positive or negative we are talking about. The word socialism is a " boo word" among most Americans; if a typical political run-in or editorial identifies a person or plan as "tending towards socialism," this is unlikely to be praise. But such an assumption would lead to errors if applied, say, to the editorial content of a oddoriented magazine such as Mother Jones or The Nation, in which the statement might well be mean positively.

Krippendorff, Klaus. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980.

Content analysis is rooted in the fallacious

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