ABSTRACT
Content analysis is commonly associated with secondary data—data slices generated by a person or government agency that are analyzed and applied in a research project by someone else. Planners commonly use content analysis to assess three types of communications: meetings, communications with the planning agency, and published reports. In content analysis and meta-analysis, questions of external validity focus on how far the planner moves away from the representativeness of the sample to explain other situations. Content analysis usually samples a smaller field of textual resources within a shorter time period than meta-analysis. Questions of internal validity in content analysis and meta-analysis focus on the planner's conclusions. There are four basic parts to a meta-analysis: variable specificity, publication type, acceptable publication sources, and publishing time frame. The research variables themselves usually determine the time frame of the publications to be reviewed in the meta-analysis.
