Content analysis: a flexible methodology.(library and information science )

ABSTRACT

Content analysis is a highly flexible research method that has been widely used in library and information science (LIS) studies with varying research goals and objectives. The research method is applied in qualitative, quantitative, and sometimes mixed modes of research frameworks and employs a wide range of analytical techniques to generate findings and put them into context. This article characterizes content analysis as a systematic, rigorous approach to analyzing documents obtained or generated in the course of research. It briefly describes the steps involved in content analysis, differentiates between quantitative and qualitative content analysis, and shows that content analysis serves the purposes of both quantitative research and qualitative research. The authors draw on selected LIS studies that have used content analysis to illustrate the concepts addressed in the article. The article also serves as a gateway to methodological books and articles that provide more detail about aspects of content analysis discussed only briefly in the article.

INTRODUCTION

As a research methodology, content analysis has its roots in the study of mass communications in the 1950s. (1) Based on a basic communications model of sender / message / receiver, initially researchers emphasized making inferences based on quantified analysis of recurring, easily identifiable aspects of text content, sometimes referred to as manifest content. Since then, researchers in many fields, including anthropology, library and information studies (LIS), management, political science, psychology, and sociology, have used content analysis. In the process, they have adapted content analysis to suit the unique needs of their research questions and strategies and have developed a cluster of techniques and approaches for analyzing text grouped under the broad term of textual analysis. A significant change has been a broadening of text aspects to include syntactic, syntagmatic, and pragmatic aspects of text, although not always within the same study. Merten (as cited by Titscher, Meyer, Wodak, & Vetter, 2000) notes that "the range of procedures in content analysis is enormous, in terms of both analytical goals and the means or processes developed to pursue them" (p. 55). The variants include, for example, besides content analysis, conversational analysis, discourse analysis, ethnographic analysis, functional pragmatics, rhetorical analysis, and narrative semiotics. (2) Although these approaches are alike in their reliance on communicative material as the raw material for analysis, they vary in the kinds of questions they address and in their methods.

This article focuses only on content analysis, not on all forms of textual analysis. It distinguishes, however, between quantitative and qualitative approaches to content analysis since both are used in information studies. Content analysis is a flexible research method that can be applied to many problems in information studies, either as a method by itself or in conjunction with other methods. Table 1 provides a selective list of research studies in LIS using content analysis published within the past fifteen years (1991-2005).

After defining content analysis, the article goes through the basic steps in a content analysis study. It does this first for quantitative content analysis, then notes the variations that exist for qualitative content analysis. Throughout the article draws on the LIS studies in Table 1 for examples. Although only certain aspects of the LIS studies are mentioned in the article, they constitute a rich trove showing the broad applicability of content analysis to many topics. The article closes with a brief bibliographical note leading to sources providing more detail about the content analysis aspects treated only briefly here.

DEFINITION

Not surprisingly, multiple, nuanced definitions of content analysis exist that reflect its historical development. This article accepts a broad-based definition in a recent content analysis textbook by Krippendorff (2004). (3) For the purpose of this article, content analysis is "a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use" (Krippendorff, 2004, p. 18). The notion of inference is especially important in content analysis. The researcher uses analytical constructs, or rules of inference, to move from the text to the answers to the research questions. The two domains, the texts and the context, are logically independent, and the researcher draws conclusions from one independent domain (the texts) to the other (the context). In LIS studies the analytical constructs are not always explicit.

The analytical constructs may be derived from (1) existing theories or practices; (2) the experience or knowledge of experts; and (3) previous research (Krippendorff, 2004, p. 173). Mayring (2000), the author of a standard German-language text on qualitative content analysis, suggests using a model of communication to determine the focal point for the inferences. Conclusions can be drawn about the communicator, the message or text, the situation surrounding its creation--including the sociocultural background of the communication--and/or the effect of the message. For example, Nitecki (1993) focuses on characterizing the communicator. She draws inferences about academicians' conceptual models of libraries based on analyzing the metaphors they used when they referred to libraries in published letters to the editor and opinion articles.

Content analysis involves specialized procedures that, at least in quantitative content analysis, allow for replication. The findings of a good study using quantitative content analysis, therefore, do not rely solely on the authority of the researchers doing the content analysis for their acceptability. They can be subjected to independent tests and techniques for judging their validity and reliability. Indeed, the extent to which validity and reliability can be judged are significant issues in evaluating a research methodology, and they are considered in subsequent sections in relation to both quantitative and qualitative content analysis.

DATA

What constitutes data that can be used for content analysis studies? Most important is that the data provide useful evidence for testing hypotheses or answering research questions. Another key factor is that the data communicate; they convey a message from a sender to a receiver. Krippendorff's definition expands text to include "other meaningful matter" (2004, p. 18). Pictures on a Web site, for example, are used to convey one or more meanings, often in combination with text (Marsh & White, 2003) and, as such, can be subjected to content analysis either by themselves or by looking at the relationships between images and text, as Marsh and White have done. Both Bell (2001) and Collier (2001) discuss the content analysis of visual images.

Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) suggest seven criteria for defining a text, which is the more common form of data for content analysis: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and intertextuality. In other words, text appropriate for content analysis is composed of linguistic elements arranged in a linear sequence that follows rules of grammar and dependencies and uses devices such as recurrence, anaphora and cataphora, ellipsis, and conjunctions to cause the elements to "hang together" to create a message (cohesion). The text has meaning, often established through relationships or implicature that may not be linguistically evident, and draws on frameworks within the recipient for understanding (coherence). The writer or speaker of the text intends for it to convey meaning related to his attitude and purpose (intentionality). Conversely, recipients of the message understand the text as a message; they expect it to be useful or relevant (acceptability). The text may contain new or expected information, allowing for judgments about its quality of informing (informativity). The situation surrounding the text affects its production and determines what is appropriate for the situation and the culture (situationality). The text is often related to what precedes and follows it, as in a conversation (one interpretation of intertextuality), or is related to other similar texts, for example, others within a genre, such as transcripts of chat sessions (another meaning of intertextuality).

The texts used in the LIS studies in Table 1 vary significantly. Some are generated in connection with the immediate research project; other texts occur naturally in the conduct of normal activities and independent of the research project. The former include responses to open questions on questionnaires (Kracker & Wang, 2002; White & Iivonen, 2001, 2002) and interviews with participants (Buchwald, 2000; Hahn, 1999). The latter include reference interviews (Dewdney, 1992), segments of published articles and books (Green, 1991; Marsh & White, 2003; Nitecki, 1993), obituaries (Dilevko & Gottlieb, 2004), problem statements in published articles (Stansbury, 2002),job advertisements (Croneis & Henderson, 2002; Lynch & Smith, 2001), messages on electronic lists (Maloney-Krichmar & Preece, 2005; White, 2000), and Web pages (Haas & Grams, 1998a, 1998b, 2000; Wang & Gao, 2004). Some studies use a combination of the two. For example, Buchwald (2000) analyzed recorded and transcribed informant interviews, observation notes generated during the research, and existing group documents in studying Canada's Coalition for Public Information's role in the federal information policy-making process.

Neuendorf (2002) proposes a useful typology of texts that takes into consideration the number of participants and/or setting for the message: individual messaging, interpersonal and group messaging, organizational messaging, and mass messaging. Individual responses to an open question on a questionnaire or in an interview are examples of individual messaging; the objective of content analysis is usually to identify that person's perspective on the topic. Reference interviews are a form of dyadic, interpersonal communication (Dewdney, 1992). Messages on electronic lists (Schoch & White, 1997) offer an example of group messaging; the person sends the message to the group, any member of which can reply. The objective, in this case, is to characterize the communications of the group. Technical services Web sites (Wang & Gao, 2004), often existing only on Intranets, are examples of organizational communication. Job advertisements in LIS journals (Croneis & Henderson, 2002) are examples of mass messaging.

All of these types of text can occur within various applied contexts. For example, within the context of consumer health communication, studying messages on consumer-oriented health electronic lists (informal, group messaging) can provide insights into information needs that are not satisfied through doctor-patient interviews (more formal, interpersonal, dyadic communication) (White, 2000). Analyzing job advertisements (Croneis & Henderson, 2002) is similar to studying personal ads in other fields (Cicerello & Sheehan, 1995).

DATA: UNITIZING

At an early point in a content analysis study, the data need to be "chunked," that is, broken into units for sampling, collecting, and analysis and reporting. Sampling units serve to identify the population and establish the basis for sampling. Data collection units are the units for measuring variables. Units of analysis are the basis for reporting analyses. These units may be, but are not necessarily, the same. In many cases, the sampling unit is the…