What is Qualitative Content Analysis?

1. What is Qualitative Content Analysis? And How Do You Do It?

2. General Definition • Broad, general set of methods • For analyzing the content • Of some qualitative material • To build or support an argument

3. What Is the Goal? • Identify important aspects of the content • Present them clearly and effectively • In support of some argument • That will persuade the reader • And contribute to the field Goal embodied in product (research paper)

4. The Goal Provides Focus • You don’t necessarily begin with it • You can change it as the work develops • But you need some idea to start • Call it a RESEARCH QUESTION • It needs to connect to some broader concern • It justifies looking at a body of material • It guides the sampling and coding choices • And guides the analysis to the argument

5. Choosing Qualitative Material • The material exists in some form already • As a cultural production with meaning • That is accessible for analysis • Text materials of any scale • Visual materials, still or moving • Audio materials that convert to text • Field notes from observation • Open-ended interview responses

6. What Does Analysis Mean? • Extracting something systematically • From qualitative material • To create evidence about the content • That builds or support an argument • That will persuade an intelligent reader

7. Qualitative Analysis • The materials start out qualitative • The analysis starts out qualitative • It can remain primarily qualitative • identifying themes • identifying patterns • describing situations

8. Or Become Quantitative • Creating Codes to define categories • Counting instances to see frequency • Coding and Recoding to see the range • Making comparisons between groups • Presenting findings in tables and graphs • Deepening analysis with statistics

9. Content Analysis Methods • Procedures keep you honest • Treat materials consistently • Ensure that data logic matches argument • Provide some reliability and validity checks • Help reader evaluate your results • Make your argument persuasive

10. Content Analysis and Computers • Methods predate use of computers • Many things are easier to do by hand • Computer can help with some aspects • Storage of raw and coded data, memos • Coding and recoding, preserving codes • Simple tallying and comparisons • Complex statistics • Data presentation

11. Computer Does Not Do the Work! • Computer cannot do analysis for you • You have to code the data yourself • You have to make sense of the results • You have to relate data to argument • You have to write the paper

12. Computer Can HELP You • Data source itself may be on computer • Computer can help transform raw data • Computer can store transformed data • Computer can manage data, store, sort • Computer can help analyze complex data • Larger scale projects become possible • Small scale projects can go deeper

13. QCA and CAQDAS Programs • Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Systems • expensive, single purpose programs • designed for computerized text • limited to western languages • work directly on text by applying codes • Not necessary for qualitative content analysis • use existing general computer tools • develop skills applicable to many areas • focus on basic principles of coding and analysis