How to do a Content Analysis?

Ariana Grande

Hi I'm currently doing research on the Health Care system and was hoping someone could show me how to do a themed qualitative content analysis?

Every tutorial I've looked up hasn't helped

mzungu

Ariana Grande wrote: »

Hi I'm currently doing research on the Health Care system and was hoping someone could show me how to do a themed qualitative content analysis?

Every tutorial I've looked up hasn't helped

Hi. I haven't done a content analysis in quite some time, but I found this paper helpful back when I did - Techniques to Identify Themes in Qualitative Data - Gerry W. Ryan

I am going from memory here, so this is going to be very basic. Regarding methodology, it is a matter of preference how you go about it, so I used Excel as my coding sheet (but made notes in MS Word identifying themes) and used column headings for all different themes I came across reading various texts. To use an example, lets say you're reading about the trolley crisis in hospitals, make a separate column for each when you come across mentions of the elderly, various illnesses patients suffer from, emotional language used by journalist, is panic or fear present among the population, was the Minister for Health quoted in the article, was a doctor featured for their views or was it a HSE spokesperson etc.

Here is a YouTube video that goes through the MS Word process of categorising themes (please note that this does not use Excel to code, however watching how the themes are highlighted will be of help):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfedAdFlpw4

Once you have gone through the articles and sorted out themes, then you can start coding themes by each individual article to see what they are and how often they occur.

I hope the above makes some sense.

Please feel free to sound out a few more ideas for it and hopefully some other fellow posters will be able to help shed a bit more light on it for you.

Black Swan

Maybe a late reference for your study, but have you read Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger ad Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist (1966)? Reads like a novel, but provides a very understandable and practical approach to content analysis, as well as other forms of qualitative methodologies.

Fathom

Content analysis. Qualitative. Relatively basic approach. Consider Grounded Theory to guide analysis. Examine data. Allow coding categories to emerge. Sort data into categories. Compare keywords. Compare content. Within and between categories. Look for emergent patterns. Make observer-comments of own behavior to rule out bias as they occur. Write narratives. Conclude. For more detailed method. See John Creswell (2017), Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design, 4th edition.