Content Analysis

Abstract

In the era of “big data,” the methodological technique of content analysis can be the most powerful tool in the researcher's kit. Content analysis is versatile enough to apply to textual, visual, and audio data. Given the massive explosion in permanent, archived linguistic, photographic, video, and audio data arising from the proliferation of technology, the technique of content analysis appears to be on the verge of a renaissance. In this essay, I discuss cutting‐edge examples of how content analysis is being applied or might be applied to the study of areas as diverse as education, criminology, and social intelligence.

Trending #hijabfashion: Using Big Data to Study Religion at the Online–Urban Interface

“…More could be done with these data. We have relied on our own interpretations to understand the meaning of social media posts, but the advance of techniques for semi-and fully automated content analysis creates opportunities to use computational analysis to aid interpretation (Stemler 2015;Manovich 2016). This article has provided a preliminary account of how big data might be appropri-ated in the study of religion.…”

Trends in Ethical Complaints Leading to Professional Counseling Licensing Boards Disciplinary Actions

“…We conducted a content analysis (Schreier, 2012; Stemler, 2001) of the collected data using a priori and emerging codes (Creswell, 2007; Hays & Singh, 2012) to guide the development of categories from the data (Webber, Kitzinger, Runte, Smith, & Mascari, 2017). Content analysis is a qualitative research method that is used to systematically analyze large amounts of text (Schreier, 2012; Webber et al, 2017).…”

“…Content analysis is a qualitative research method that is used to systematically analyze large amounts of text (Schreier, 2012; Webber et al, 2017). This type of qualitative analysis is appropriate for this study because we were analyzing archival textual data from counseling licensing boards (Schreier, 2012; Stemler, 2001). Researchers in counseling have used this research methodology to explore textual data in the profession (e.g., Evans, 2013; Shin et al, 2017; Webber et al, 2017).…”

Content of Qualitative Feedback Provided During Structured, Confidential Reference Checks

“…We chose to use an empirically driven, inductive content analysis model (Stemler, 2015). Furthermore, a highly nonevaluative approach known as in vivo coding was utilized.…”