RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

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Content analysis and grounded theory
Introduction
This chapter addresses two main forms of qualitative
data analysis: content analysis and grounded
theory, and provides two worked examples. Many
qualitative data analysts undertake forms of content
analysis. One of the enduring problems of
qualitative data analysis is the reduction of copious
amounts of written data to manageable and
comprehensible proportions. Data reduction is a
key element of qualitative analysis, performed in a
way that attempts to respect the quality of the qualitative
data. One common procedure for achieving
this is content analysis, a process by which the
‘many words of texts are classified into much fewer
categories’ (Weber 1990: 15). The goal is to reduce
the material in different ways (Flick 1998:
192). Categories are usually derived from theoretical
constructs or areas of interest devised in
advance of the analysis (pre-ordinate categorization)
rather than developed from the material
itself, though these may be modified, of course, by
reference to the empirical data.
What is content analysis
The term ‘content analysis’ is often used sloppily.
In effect, it simply defines the process of
summarizing and reporting written data – the
main contents of data and their messages. More
strictly speaking, it defines a strict and systematic
set of procedures for the rigorous analysis,
examination and verification of the contents of
written data (Flick 1998: 192; Mayring 2004:
266). Krippendorp (2004: 18) defines it as ‘a
research technique for making replicable and valid
inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter)
to the contexts of their use’. Texts are defined as
any written communicative materials which are
intended to be read, interpreted and understood
by people other than the analysts (Krippendorp
2004: 30).
Originally deriving from analysis of mass
media and public speeches, the use of content
analysis has spread to examination of any form
of communicative material, both structured and
unstructured. It may be ‘applied to substantive
problems at the intersection of culture, social
structure, and social interaction; used to generate
dependent variables in experimental designs; and
used to study groups as microcosms of society’
(Weber 1990: 11). Content analysis can be
undertaken with any written material, from
documents to interview transcriptions, from media
products to personal interviews. It is often used
to analyse large quantities of text, facilitated by
the systematic, rule-governed nature of content
analysis, not least because this enables computerassisted
analysis to be undertaken.
Content analysis has several attractions. It is
an unobtrusive technique (Krippendorp 2004: 40)
in that one can observe without being observed
(Robson 1993: 280). It focuses on language
and linguistic features, meaning in context, is
systematic and verifiable (e.g. in its use of codes
and categories), as the rules for analysis are
explicit, transparent and public (Mayring 2004:
267–9). Further, as the data are in a permanent
form (texts), verification through reanalysis and
replication is possible.
Many researchers see content analysis as an
alternative to numerical analysis of qualitative
data. But this is not so, although it is widely used
as a device for extracting numerical data from
word-based data. Indeed Anderson and Arsenault
(1998: 101–2) suggest that content analysis can