Content Analysis

Content analysis has various definitions. Berelson (1952) described content analysis as a research technique for objective, systematic, and quantitative descriptions of manifest and latent content of communication. Krippendorff (1980) considered content analysis to be a research tool for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context. Cole (1988) stated that the method is a way to analyze written, verbal, or visual communicative messages. Berger (1991) stated that content analysis is “a research technique that is based on measuring the amount of something (violence, negative portrayals of women, or whatever) in a representative sampling of some mass-mediated popular form of art” (p. 25). Neuman (1997) defined content analysis as a method for gathering and analyzing the content of text. A “text” for Neuman is anything written, visual, or spoken. Each definition shares some common elements that we use to make our definition of content analysis. Content analysis is a research method that systematically describes, categorizes, and/or makes inferences about communication messages. Thus, the claims that one can make using content analysis vary extensively depending on whether you are using qualitative or quantitative analysis. In this chapter, we dissect each part of the definition.