SC  380
Fall  2013
Content  Analysis  Assignment
Introduction
For  this  assignment,  your  goal  is  to  use  content  analysis  to  examine  and  compare  how   published  articles  portray  an  issue  of  interest.  Content  analysis  as  a  method  of  research  is   useful  for  showing  how  some  aspect  of  reality  is  portrayed  by  some  media  outlet.  It  provides  a   sustained,  systematic  way  to  observe  and  measure  the  portrayal  of  that  reality,  as  opposed  to
the  quick,  impressionistic  way  that  we  normally  read  news  articles.
Even  though  content  analysis  is  usually  based  on  a  large  sample  of  articles,  for  this   assignment,  you  are  only  being  asked  to  analyze  a  small  sample.  Because  you  are  only   analyzing  5-­‐‑10  articles,  your  results  cannot  be  easily  generalized  to  a  larger  area  of  interest— like  how   all  news  outlets  portray  the  issue.  So  the  goal  of  this  assignment  is  to  give  you   experience  of   how  you  would  do  content  analysis  on  a  larger  scale,  by  using  a  few  articles  as  an   example.
Below,  I  list  the  different  steps  for  the  assignment,  and  at  the  end,  I  list  the  components  of  your   report  that  you  will  write  up  and  hand  in  for  a  grade.  I  recommend  that  you  write  the  report   as  you  go.  This  is  not  the  kind  of  assignment  in  which  you  need  to  know  what  results  you  get   before  you  write  everything.  It  is  more  honest  to  write  the  report  as  you  go;  then  you  can   avoid  the  unethical  temptation  to  write  your  hypothesis  and  research  procedures  in  retrospect   so  it  makes  your  results  look  better.
Sorry  to  those  of  you  who  like  to  work  alone;  you  need  at  least  a  partner  for  this  project
(you  could  also  work  in  a  larger  group).
I  will  make  time  in  class  to  work  on  this.  Please  keep  up  with  the  schedule,  and  make  sure  that   you’ve  completed  the  previous  steps  before  we  move  on  to  the  next  one.
•
We  will  work  on  step  1-­‐‑2  in  class  on  October  16 th .
•
We  will  work  on  step  3  in  class  on  October  21 st .
•
We  will  work  on  step  4  in  class  on  October  23 rd .
•
We  will  work  on  steps  5  and  6  in  class  on  the  28 th .
•
We  will  have  a  peer  review  in  class  on  the  30 th .  (You  should  have  a  draft  written   by  this   day;  it  can  be  a  paper  you  wrote  alone,  or  a  collective  draft  for  your  group.)
What  to  Do
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SC  380
Fall  2013
Content  Analysis  Assignment
Step  1:  With  your  group,  find  10-­‐‑15  articles   per  group  to  analyze.  You  should  find  articles  that   are  primarily  text-­‐‑based:  content  analysis  of  images  is  possible  and  definitely  done  in  social   science,  but  text  analysis  is  the  classical  technique,  so  we’ll  mostly  do  that.  The  important  part   of  this  is  that  you  choose  articles  that  you  want  to   compare  in  some  way:  you  could  choose   articles  from  the  same  source  on  the  same  topic,  but  at  different  times;  you  could  choose   articles  about  the  same  topic  from  different  sources;  you  could  choose  articles  about  an  event,   written  by  different  authors  in  the  same  source,  etc.
Your  choices  should  be  published  in  a  somewhat  “mainstream”  news  source.  They  should  be   between  750  and  1000  words  in  length.  Read  the  articles  once  so  you  can  get  a  sense  of  what   the  article  is  about,  its  tone,  its  message,  etc.  This  will  help  you  decide  on  what  variables  you   want  to  choose  and  what  your  hypothesis  will  be.
Step  2:  With  your  partner,  prepare  the  text  of  the  article  for  analysis.  Put  the  text  of  the  article   into  a  word  processing  document  and  leave  at  least  a  4”  margin  on  the  right-­‐‑hand  side.  You   leave  that  part  of  the  paper  blank  so  you  can  manually  code  the  article.  Print  out  the  article  for
each  person  in  the  group,  since  you’ll  code  alone.
(Obviously,  this  part  is  easier  if  you  choose  a  source  that  has  online  content  –  many  magazines   do,  and  you  can  access  them  through  the  databases  at  the  library  or  on  their  websites.)
Step  3:  With  your  partner,  decide  on  your  unit  of  analysis,  and  choose   3  variables  and  their   attributes  for  coding.  Talk  together  about  what  variables  you  want  to  code  for,  what  the   attributes  will  be,  and  what  is  the  best  unit  of  analysis  to  use.  For  example,  if  you  have  an   article  about  Sarah  Palin,  one  variable  you  could  code  for  would  be  “intelligence,”  and  the   attributes  could  be  “positive,”  “negative,”  “mixed,”  and  “neutral.”  Or,  you  could  choose  the   variable  “attractiveness,”  and  the  attributes  of  the  variable  could  be   who   spoke  about  the  issue:
“author,”  “pundit,”  “scholar,”  “citizen,”  etc.
In  the  process  of  choosing  your  variables  and  attributes,  decide  on  what  is  the  best  unit  of
analysis:  do  you  want  to  code  every  paragraph?  Every  sentence?  Every  independent  clause?
You  should  be  able  to  justify  your  decision  in  a  reasonable  way.
Step  4:  With  your  group,  label  one  independent  and  one  dependent  variable  and  state  a   hypothesis.  Based  on  your  initial  reading  of  the  article,  and  on  the  variables  and  attributes  you   have  selected,  state  one  hypothesis  about  what  you  expect  to  find.  Your  hypothesis  should  be   about  the  relationship  between  two  of  your  variables.   Remember,  the  ways  in  which  you’ve  chosen   to  vary  your  articles  is  an  independent  variable  too  (year,  author,  source,  etc.)!
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SC  380
Fall  2013
Content  Analysis  Assignment
Based  on  the  coding  that  you  are  about  to  do,  you  should  be  able  to  state  what  results  would
“support  the  hypothesis”  and  what  results  would  “not  support  the  hypothesis.”  (Remember,   you  can’t  “prove”  the  hypothesis  correct  or  incorrect.  You  just  collect  data  that  supports  it,  or
fails  to  support  it.)
So  one  hypothesis  in  the  Palin  example  could  be:  articles  that  spoke  negatively  about  her   intelligence  would  be  more  likely  to  talk  about  her  attractiveness.  Another  hypothesis  could  be   that  the  New  York  Times  would  be  more  likely  to  contain  negative  images  about  her
intelligence  than  the  Wall  Street  Journal.
Step  5:  Individually,  go  through  and  code  the  article  for  your  3  chosen  variables.  Each  unit  of   analysis  should  be  coded  for  each  variable.  You  decide  whether  you  want  to  do  one  variable  at   a  time,  or  whether  you  want  to  code  for  all  three  variables  at  once.  I  recommend  clearly   marking  divisions  between  units  of  analysis  at  first,  and  then  using  a  different  color  of  pen  to   write  down  the  attribute  of  each  variable.  Each  unit  should  receive  only  one  code  for  each
variable.
Step  6:  With  your  partner,  compare  your  coding  with  your  partner’s.  For   each   of  your  3   variables,  you  should  calculate  each  of  the  following  figures:
N  =  total  number  of  units  coded
A  =  number  of  units  that  you  and  your  partner  coded  the  same
C  =  number  of  units  that  you  and  your  partner  coded  differently
A/N  =  “intercoder  reliability”  (the  proportion  of  units  that  were  coded  the  same)
Step  7:  Write  the  report.  You  can  write  your  papers  separately,  or  you  can  write  a  group  paper
that  includes  all  possible  intercoder  reliability  calculations.
A) Introduction:  In  your  introduction,  you  should  introduce  the  article  that  you  analyzed.
Give  the  citation  information  for  the  article  (author,  title,  source,  date,  page  numbers,  #   of  words)  and  describe  briefly  what  the  article  is  about.  Also,  briefly  talk  about  the   context  in  which  the  article  is  published.  For  example,  you  could  talk  about  what  kind   of  source  it  is,  who  the  intended  audience  is,  what  was  going  on  in  the  campaign  or  in   the  news  at  the  time  when  the  article  was  published,  or  anything  else  you  think  it  is   important  to  keep  in  mind  when  trying  to  understand  the  meaning  or  significance  of   the  article.
B) Unit  of  Analysis,  Variables,  and  Attributes:  Explain   what  your  unit  of  analysis  is  and   what  variables  you  chose  for  the  coding.  Explain   why  you  selected  those  particular   variables  and  unit  of  analysis.  In  addition,  explain  how  you  decided  what  the  attributes
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SC  380
Fall  2013
Content  Analysis  Assignment   of  the  variables  are  and  justify  your  decision.  (In  other  words,  explain  why  you  decided   to  code  for  those  variables  in  the  way  that  you  did.)
C) Hypothesis:  State  your  hypothesis  and  label  the  independent  and  dependent  variables.
Justify  why  you  think  the  hypothesis  will  be  supported.  Also  write  specifically  what   criteria  you  will  use  to  decide  whether  the  hypothesis  is  “supported  by  the  data”  or
“not  supported  by  the  data.”
D) Coding  Method:  Describe  how  you  coded  the  article—the  process  by  which  you  coded   for  your  3  variables.  State  the  extent  to  which  each  variable  was  coded  inductively  and   the  extent  to  which  each  variable  was  coded  deductively.  Then  present  the  reliability   figures  that  you  calculated  with  your  partner  and  comment  on  what  these  figures  tell   you  about  how  reliable  or  unreliable  your  coding  scheme  was.
E) Univariate  Description  of  Results:  In  this  section,  you  should  present  the  raw  results  of   your  coding  over  the  entire  sample  of  articles.  Each  variable  should  be  described  fully   according  to  its  attributes,  and  the  attributes  should  be  indicated  in  both  numerical  and   percentage  terms  (summing  to  100%).  Depending  on  your  variables,  it  probably  makes   sense  to  present  this  in  some  graphic  form  (which  graphic  is  up  to  you  –  table,  bar   graph,  pie  chart,  whatever  works  best  for  your  presentation).  Each  table  would  display   the  full  list  of  attributes  for  one  variable  and  the  number  and  %  of  times  that  the   attribute  was  identified  as  a  code.   Be  sure  that  you  also  tell  the  reader  in  the  text  what   the  graphics  say.  The  graphics  do  not  speak  for  themselves!  In  essence,  you  present   this  information  twice:  both  in  the  text  and  in  graphic  form.
F) Bivariate  Description  of  Results:  In  this  section,  present  the  raw  results  of  a  cross-­‐‑ tabulation  between  the  two  variables  that  make  up  your  hypothesis.  Construct  a   contingency  table  or  cross-­‐‑tab  (the  tables  you  did  in  the  observation  assignment)  that   shows  how  one  independent  variable  relates  to  one  dependent  variable.  The   percentages  for  each  attribute  of  the  independent  variable  should  roughly  equal  100.
Describe  these  results  in  the  text.
Remember  what  this  looks  like?
Media  Representation  of  Sarah  Palin’s  Intelligence  in  the  NY  Times
Positive
Negative
Neutral
Mixed
Total
2008
48%
9%
27%
16%
100%  (n=38)
2011
18%
21%
3%
58%
100%  (n=61)
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SC  380
Fall  2013
Content  Analysis  Assignment
Why  are  these  percentages  so  wonky  when  you  only  have  5-­‐‑10  articles?  Because  remember,   your  unit  of  analysis   isn’t   the  article.  It’s  based  on  the  unit  you  chose  with  your  group
(paragraph,  phrase,  word,  etc.).  So  “n=38”  and  “n=61”  refer  to  the  number  of  utterances  that
you  coded   in  some  way.
G) Analysis  of  Results:  In  this  section,  you  should  interpret  your  results—say  what  is   significant  about  them.  First,  explain  what  the  bivariate  description  above  means,  and   state  why  the  results  “support  your  hypothesis”  or  “do  not  support  your  hypothesis.”
Second,  talk  about  the  “manifest  content”  of  the  article—what  we  can  conclude  about   the  meaning  of  the  article  strictly  from  the  words  that  are  there  and  the  coded  variables   that  were  unambiguous.  (Hint:  You  should  have  high  intercoder  reliability  on  these   variables.)  Third,  talk  about  the  “latent  content”  of  the  article—what  we  can  conclude   about  the  meaning  of  the  article  if  you  include  your  interpretive  “reading  between  the   lines”  and  other  contextual  factors  that  might  shape  the  meaning  of  the  article.  (Hint:
You  should  have  lower  intercoder  reliability  on  these  variables.)  Finally,  state  the   limitations  of  your  analysis  and  what  should  be  done  differently  in  future  research.
H) Appendix:  Attach  the  text  of  one  of  your  articles,  visibly  marked  with  all  the  codes  from   the  coding  process.
Step  8:  Individually,  submit  a  Group  Process  Report.  In  it,  explain  how  you  and  your  partner   worked  together  in  the  steps  that  required  cooperation,  and  whether  or  not  you  think  you  and   your  partner  worked  well  together  and  shared  the  workload  equally.  You  and  your  partner   must  NOT  see  what  each  other  wrote,  and  I  will  not  share  your  report  with  your  partner.  They   will  be  kept  strictly  confidential.
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