The Content Analysis Guidebook
by Kimberly A. Neuendorf
| Table of Contents (with hyperlinks) |
Acknowledgements
List of Text BoxesList of Tables and Figures
Foreword
Isn't content analysis "easy"?
Myth #1: Content analysis is easy
Myth #2: The term "content analysis" applies to all examinations of message content
Myth #3: Anyone can do content analysis; it doesn't take any special preparation
Myth #4: Content analysis is for academic use only
A six-part definition of content analysis
1. Content analysis as relying on the scientific method
A. Objectivity/intersubjectivity
B. An a priori design
C. Reliability
D. Validity
E. Generalizability
F. Hypothesis testing
2. The message as the unit of analysis and/or the unit of data collection
3. Content analysis as quantitative
4. Content analysis as summarizing
5. Content analysis as applicable to all contexts
A. Individual messaging
B. Interpersonal and group messaging
C. Organizational messaging
D. Mass messaging
E. Applied contexts
6. All message characteristics are available to content analyze
Manifest vs. latent content
Content vs. form characteristics
Text analysis vs. other types of content analysis
Chapter 2
Milestones in the History of Content Analysis
The growing popularity of content analysis
Milestones of content analysis research
Rhetorical analysis
Biblical concordances and the quantification of history
The Payne Fund studies
The language of politics (and Harold Lasswell)
The war at home--advances in social and behavioral science methods during WWII
Speech as a personality trait
Department of Social Relations at Harvard (and the General Inquirer computer program)
Television images--violence and beyond
The power of computing
The global content analysis village
The language of the scientific method
How content analysis is done--a flowchart for the typical process of content analytic research
Human coding vs. computer coding
Approaches to content analysis
Descriptive content analysis
Inferential content analysis
Psychographic content analysis
Predictive content analysis
The integrative model of content analysis
Evaluation with the integrative model of content analysis
First-order linkage
Second-order linkage
Third-order linkage
Linking message and receiver data
Linking message and source data
Developing new linkages
Chapter 4
Message Units and Sampling
Units
Unitizing a continuous stream of information
Defining the population
The evaluation of archives
Medium management
Sampling
Random sampling
Nonrandom sampling
Sample size
Identifying "critical" variables
A consideration of universal variables
Using theory and past research for variable collection
A grounded or "emergent" process of variable identification
Attempting to find medium-specific critical variables
Hypotheses, predictions, and research questions
Conceptual definitions
Hypotheses
Research questions
Defining "measurement"
Validity, reliability, accuracy, and precision
Validity
Reliability
Accuracy
Precision
How the standard interrelate
Types of validity assessment
External validity/generalizability
Face validity
Criterion-related validity
Content validity
Construct validity
Operationalization
Categories or levels that are exhaustive
Categories or levels that are mutually exclusive
An appropriate level of measurement
Dictionaries for text analysis
Selection of a computer text content analysis program
Number of cases/units analyzed
Unit size limitation
Frequency output
Alphabetical output
KWIC/concordance
Standard dictionaries
Custom dictionaries
Specialty analyses
Human coding
Coder training
The process
Medium modality and coding
Index construction in content analysis
Chapter 7
Reliability
Intercoder reliability standards and practices
Issues in the assessment of reliability
Agreement vs. covariation
Reliability as a function of coder and unit subsamples
Threats to reliability
Reliability for manifest vs. latent content
Reliability and unitizing
Pilot and final reliabilities
Intercoder reliability coefficients--issues and comparisons
Agreement
Agreement controlling for the impact of chance agreement
Covariation
Calculating intercoder reliability coefficients
The reliability subsample
Subsample size
Sampling type
Assignment of units to coders
Treatment of variables that do not achieve an acceptable level of reliability
The use of multiple coders
Advanced and specialty issues in reliability coefficient selection
Beyond basic coefficients
The possibility of "consistency" intra-coder reliability assessment
Controlling for covariates
Sequential overlapping reliability coding
Chapter 8
Results and Reporting
Hypothesis testing
Hypotheses and research questions--a reminder
Inferential vs. non-parametric statistics
Selecting the appropriate statistical tests
Frequencies
Co-occurrences and in-context occurrences
Timelines
Bivariate relationships
Multivariate relationships
Chapter 9
Contexts
Psychographic applications of content analysis
Thematic content analysis
Clinical applications
Open-ended written and pictorial responses
Linguistics and semantic networks (e.g., CL Research)
Stylometrics and computer literary analysis
Interaction analysis (e.g., CHILDES, RIB Interaction Scheme)
Other interpersonal behaviors
Gender roles
Minority portrayals
Advertising
News
Political communication
Web analyses
Other applied contexts
Commercial and other client-based applications of content analysis
Funded research conducted by academics
Commercial applications of text analysis
Content analysis for standards and practices
Future directions
Appendix A
Message Archives
General collections
Film, television, and radio archives
Political messages
Literary and general corpora
Open-ended data archives
Appendix B
Using NEXIS for Text Acquisition for Content Analysis
Appendix C
Computer Content Analysis Software, by Paul Skalski
Part I: Quantitative computer text analysis programs
CATPAC
Computer Programs for Text Analysis (Eric Johnson)
LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count)
MECA
SALT (Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts)
TABARI (Text Analysis by Augmented Replacement Instructions)
Part II: VBPro How-to and Executional Flowchart
Appendix D
An Introduction to PRAM--A Program for Reliability Assessment
with Multiple Coders
Author index
Subject index
Box 1.1--Defining Content Analysis: Some of the main "players" in the development of quantitative message analysis present their points-of-view
Box 1.2--Analyzing Communication in Crisis: Perpetrator and negotiator interpersonal exchanges
Box 1.3--The Variety of Content Analysis: Religious TV--Tapping message characteristics ranging from communicator style to dollar signs
Box 2.1--Content Analysis Timeline: Content Analysis and Text Analysis
Box 2.2--When Movies were King
Box 3.1--A Flowchart for the Typical Process of Content Analysis
Box 3.2--The Practical Prediction of Advertising Readership
Box 3.3--Creating the "Perfect" Advertisement: Using content analysis for creative message construction
Box 3.4--Approaching Causality--Does Press Coverage Cause Public Opinion?
Box 4.1--Standard Error and Confidence Intervals
Box 5.1--The Critical Variable that Almost Got Away: Camera technique in music videos
Box 5.2--Message Complexity: An example of a possible "universal" variable for content analysis
Box 6.1--Comparing Reliability, Accuracy, and Precision
Box 6.2--Sample Codebook--Character Demographics Analysis
Box 6.3--Sample Coding Form--Character Demographics Analysis
Box 6.4--The Evolution of a Dictionary Set--Political Speech Indexing
Box 7.1--Popular Agreement Coefficients--Calculating Percent Agreement, Scott's pi, Cohen's kappa, and Krippendorff's alpha
Box 7.2--Popular Covariation Coefficients--Calculating Spearman rho and Pearson correlation (r)
Box 7.3--Humor, A Problematic Construct: Partitioning a construct on the basis of reliability-imposed constraints
Box 8.1--Selecting Appropriate Statistics
Box 9.1--Content Analysis in the Year 2100
Table 1.1--Medical Primetime Network Television Programming, 1951-1998
Figure 3.1--A Flowchart for the Typical Process of Content Analysis
Table 8.1--Reprinted from Olson (1994)
Figure 8.1--Reprinted from Cecil (1998)
Figure 8.2--Reprinted from Sengupto (1996)
Figure 8.3--Reprinted from Chang (1998)
Table 8.2--KWIC analysis of fear in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Figure 8.4--Reprinted from Willnat & Zhu (1996)
Figure 8.5--Reprinted from Finkel & Geer (1998)
Table 8.3--Reprinted from Schreer & Strichartz (1997)
Table 8.4--Reprinted from Taylor & Taylor (1994)
Table 8.5--Reprinted from Cutler & Javalgi (1992)
Figure 8.6--Reprinted from Pettijohn & Tesser (1999)
Table 8.6--Reprinted from Naccarato & Neuendorf (1998)
Figure 8.7--Reprinted from Andsager & Powers (1999)
Figure 8.8--Reprinted from Palmquist, Carley, & Dale (1997)
Figure 8.9--Reprinted from Watt & Welch (1993)
Figure 8.10--Reprinted from Whissell (1996)
Table C.1--Computer Text Analysis Software
|
Kimberly A. Neuendorf |