Content Analysis

Definition

A method of analysing the contents of documents that uses quantitative measures of the frequency of appearance of particular elements in the text. The number of times that a particular item is used, and the number of contexts in which it appears, are used as measures of the significance of particular ideas or meanings in the document.

Distinctive Features

Content analysis was used as a way of studying the contents of newspapers and it was developed most systematically during the 1940s in a series of studies on political propaganda in the mass media. Under the direction of Harold Lasswell, this research aimed to uncover the intentions and interests behind particular media products and to show how these intentions and interests shaped the presentation of information and ideas in the media. They aimed to show, for example, how newspaper and radio presentation of information about wartime events could produce a distinctive message, or set of messages, that would have the effect of producing particular attitudes and preferences among the members of the audience. Content analysis formed a part, therefore, of a particular model of mass media production and effects in which it was combined with the survey analysis of readers and audiences. Over the following decades, content analysis was systematized as a distinctive formal method, separate from these particular assumptions, that could be used as a step in the analysis of any kind of documentary source.

In content analysis, the contents of a document are analysed by the frequency with which particular categories of meaning are used. The aim is to identify clear and coherent categories that highlight salient aspects of the message conveyed and to use objective and reliable methods of calculating their relative significance in the overall message. The categories used will vary from study to study, according to the nature of the material and the theoretical presuppositions of the researcher. Categories in content analysis will, therefore, include such diverse things as positive, negative and neutral expressions concerning political parties, women, medical treatment, asylum seekers, God and street crime. Very often, the aim is to devise categories that grasp favourable or unfavourable attitudes or representations of these. For each category, the particular words, phrases or images that exemplify it must then be specified. The researcher takes the frequency with [Page 41]which the words, phrases and images appear as indicators of the salience of the category of meaning.

Holsti (1969) has said that such sets of categories must meet the formal criteria of comprehensiveness, exhaustiveness, mutual exclusiveness and independence. The compilation of a set of categories depends upon the range of materials from which they are selected. Content analysis must aim to cover as wide a range of relevant sources as possible. A set of categories must be exhaustive in that they allow every relevant item to be classified into one of the categories; and the categories must be mutually exclusive in that it is not possible to classify any item into more than one category. These criteria reduce the ambiguity of classification. The criterion of independence means that the classification of any one item must not affect the classification of any others. Each classification decision is taken on its own terms.

...