Editing Content analysis (section)

== Goals ==

Content analysis is best understood as a broad family of techniques. Effective researchers choose techniques that best help them answer their substantive questions. That said, according to [[Klaus Krippendorff]], six questions must be addressed in every content analysis:<ref name="Krippendorff2004"/>

#Which data are analyzed?
#How are the data defined?
#From what population are data drawn?
#What is the relevant context?
#What are the boundaries of the analysis?
#What is to be measured?

The simplest and most objective form of content analysis considers unambiguous characteristics of the text such as [[word frequencies]], the page area taken by a newspaper column, or the duration of a [[radio]] or [[television]] program. Analysis of simple word frequencies is limited because the meaning of a word depends on surrounding text.  [[Key Word in Context|Key Word In Context]] (KWIC) routines address this by placing words in their textual context. This helps resolve ambiguities such as those introduced by [[synonym]]s and [[homonym]]s.

A further step in analysis is the distinction between dictionary-based (quantitative) approaches and qualitative approaches. Dictionary-based approaches set up a list of categories derived from the frequency list of words and control the distribution of words and their respective categories over the texts. While methods in quantitative content analysis in this way transform observations of found categories into quantitative statistical data, the qualitative content analysis focuses more on the intentionality and its implications. There are strong parallels between qualitative content analysis and [[thematic analysis]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Vaismoradi|first1=Mojtaba|last2=Turunen|first2=Hannele|last3=Bondas|first3=Terese|date=2013-09-01|title=Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study|journal=Nursing & Health Sciences|language=en|volume=15|issue=3|pages=398–405|doi=10.1111/nhs.12048|pmid=23480423|s2cid=10881485 |issn=1442-2018|doi-access=free}}</ref>