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D.Haford
How to deal with a whole lot of words
Aims for today
Content Analysis
Strengths and
Weaknesses
Application
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Types
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Definition
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Are the Texans less capable of
understanding sarcasm….?
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Brits vrs Texans…
The method by which
you take qualitative
data and analyse it in
order to draw
conclusions.
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The Definition - Content Analysis
Types of Content Analysis
Qualitative to Quantitative 1
•pick categories (e.g.
roundness)
•count frequency of
occurrence for each
category
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Frequency Analysis - the number of times
certain words come up (e.g. number of
times that sexual references come up in daytime television)
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Concordance Analysis - the number of
times certain phrases come up.
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Types of Content Analysis
Qualitative to Quantitative 2
Qualitative results
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Qualitative data
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And finally, the difficult one...
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•Are there any ways you can
‘chunk’ this evidence? Any themes
in how Dib’s feels or thinks?
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How can we analyse this data?
Types of Content Analysis
Qualitative to Qualitative
• Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
• Read transcript several times
• Identify emergent themes
• Order and organise themes into clusters
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(IPS)
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• Table of themes
Interpretative Phenomenological
Analysis (IPS)
“Well! You are welcome, too,’ Dibs exclaimed. “And now I will open the window so fresh air
can come in.” (Opens Window) “Come in, air! Come on in and be with us.” (He grinned at me)
“Papa doesn’t like me to talk to the air, but in here I will if I feel like it.”
“Good morning” he says to me. I don’t look at him. I don’t answer him. “What is the matter
with you” he says “I know you can talk” But I don’t say anything. I don’t look at him. He gets
so upset!’ (Dibs laughs)
Category - Father’s disapproval
Papa says I ought to talk to him
Papa says people just talk to people
Papa doesn’t like me to talk to the air
What is the matter with you
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“Papa says people just talk to people. Papa says I ought to talk to him, but I don’t. I listen to
him, but I don’t talk to him. No, often I do not answer him. It upsets him very much.”
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In here if you feel like it okay” I remarked.
Aims for today
Content Analysis
Strengths and
Weaknesses
Application
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Types
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Definition
Evaluation
•Great to study emotions and motivation
• Can establish what caused the
behaviour
• Can study rare behaviours in detail (for
example, Dibs)
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• Individual Differences
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What is good about using content analysis
vrs just doing a questionnaire or
psychometric test?
Evaluation
•Can’t really generalise
• Reliability - how one person views the
report/data may be different from
someone else
•Validity - the language is ambiguous and
may be misinterpreted.
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• Not Scientific (I.e. its hard to
statistically prove anything)
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Why should we not use content analysis?
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•What areas of environmental psychology
might use content analysis in its research?
Why?
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Application
For Example
•Took subjects from Western Australia
•Did an in-depth qualitative study
•Used content analysis to identify themes
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The study by Rogan et al on the effect of changing
environment on human experience. (2005)
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•Results showed a wide range of feelings about changes
in the environment, but overall there was a
demonstrable relationship between environment and
feelings of family and emotional regulation.
Homework … yeah!
•Explanation
•Example
The first advantage of using content analysis is Individual
Differences
This is an advantage because using content analysis allows us
to show that each individual feels differently about an issue
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Review evaluation and try and apply to current
•Idea
studies (use worksheet)
environmental change on human experience, she found that
different groups of people in the community felt differently
about the impact of environmental degradation
.
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For example, in the study by Rogan on the influence of
Summary
• Frequency
Concordance
Content Analysis
Strengths and
Weaknesses
•Individual Differences
•Helps determine Cause
•In depth data on rare cases
• IPS
Application
•Not scientific
•Open to bias
•language misinterpreted
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Types
Studies on human perception of
environment (e.g. about architecture
or environmental change).
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Definition - on handout