C ONTENT A NALYSIS

social constructionism. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.),Handbook of qualitative research(2nd ed., pp. 189–213). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Smith, J. K. (1989).The nature of social and educational inquiry: Empiricism versus interpretation.Norwood, NJ:

Ablex.

Thompson, C., & Bales, S. (1991). “Michael doesn’t like my dinosaurs”: Conversations in a preschool art class.Studies in Art Education, 33(1), 43–55.

van Manen, M. (1990).Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy.Albany: State University of New York Press.

interview transcript) may be relevant to more than one category or theme. When applying labels to cate- gories, it is good practice to use language consistent with that used in the text under analysis. For example, if new parents in an interview study tend to use the wordjoyto describe one of their experiences, then the researcher should use that word, rather than a syn- onym such as happiness, to label that theme. This practice is related to the need to remain true to the source of the text. As much as possible, the results of a content analysis should make sense and resonate accurately with the producers of that text (e.g., with interview participants).

In quantitative work, content analysis is applied in a deductive manner, producing frequencies of preselected categories or values associated with particular variables.

A qualitative approach to content analysis, however, is typically inductive, beginning with deep close reading of text and attempting to uncover the less obvious con- textual or latent content therein. For example, a researcher seeking to understand participants’ experi- ences or understandings of a phenomenon of interest is likely to use such an inductive approach to analysis of interview data. The quantitative or qualitative approaches may be combined within a single research study depending on the purpose of the analysis.

Validity and reliability are key to robust content analysis. In qualitative terms, the researcher doing a qualitative content analysis seeks trustworthiness and credibility by conducting iterative analyses, seeking negative or contradictory examples, seeking confirmatory data through methodological triangula- tion, and providing supporting examples for conclu- sions drawn. For example, using more than one researcher to analyze the data and seeking agreement between different researchers on the content identi- fied is a common method of improving trustworthi- ness. In qualitative content analysis, a reliability coefficient of .60 (i.e., 60% agreement between dif- ferent coders) is considered acceptable. Because meaning is context dependent and subjective, a sin- gle piece of text can indeed be open to different qualitative interpretations by different researchers.

Reliability of judgment remains important neverthe- less, and researchers must always be mindful of the perspectives they bring to their analytic work as well as of the context for the text being analyzed. In addi- tion, once thematic categories are identified, the careful researcher attempts to ensure that the group- ings or categories of data are carefully defined in

ways that are comprehensive (i.e., they cover all cat- egories identifiable in the data set and all relevant data are categorized) and mutually exclusive (i.e., their definitions do not overlap). These are important intellectual principles that increase trust worthiness of the analyses and conclusions. The researcher also should consider what is missing or not present in the text being analyzed. For example, if new parents do not mention any positive emotions in interviews, then this absence is also worthy of attention and interpretation.

Content analysis is an intellectual process, but the outcomes of that thinking must be recorded in some way. Practically speaking, content analysis can be accomplished using very low-tech materials such as a pencil and paper, colored sticky notes, or colored felt pens. These tools are likely sufficient for relatively small amounts of text such as a small number of inter- view transcripts. However, several useful software packages, such as NVivo, are very helpful tools for handling larger quantities of data. These tools can assist the researcher in organizing intellectual work quickly and in bringing identified categories of data together for easy comparison. These programs also offer tools to define categories, annotate text, write memos, and calculate frequencies of categories and codes. Using a computer does not reduce the need for intellectual effort on the part of the researcher, but doing so certainly provides help in recording and organizing the results of that effort.

As an analytic method, content analysis is very flexible, providing a systematic way of synthesizing a wide range of data. It can be a useful way of analyz- ing longitudinal data to demonstrate change over time and is nonintrusive because it is applied to data already collected or existing text.

Heidi Julien

See alsoData Analysis; Document Analysis; NVivo (Software); Textual Analysis; Thematic Coding and Analysis; Themes

Further Readings

Given, L. M., & Olson, H. A. (2003). Knowledge organization in research: A conceptual model for

organizing data.Library & Information Science Research, 25,157–176.

Krippendorf, K. (2004).Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology(2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Content Analysis———121

Mayring, P. (2000). Qualitative content analysis.Forum:

Qualitative Social Research 1(2). Available from http://qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-00/2- 00mayring-e.htm

Mostyn, B. (1985). The content analysis of qualitative research data: A dynamic approach. In M. Brenner, J. Brown, & D. Canter (Eds.),The research interview: Uses and approaches(pp. 115–145). London: Academic Press.

C

^{ONTEXT AND}

C

ONTEXTUALITY

Central to most forms of qualitative inquiry is the idea that human actions, of whatever kind, can be properly understood onlyin context—that by their very nature they aresituated.In these terms, quantitative methods are often criticized for effectively stripping what people say and do out of their normal contexts. Instead of this, qualitative researchers generally seek to gather data in “natural” settings and in ways that are sensitive to the contexts in which the data were generated.

At the same time, there are some significant differ- ences among qualitative researchers over what taking account of context means. One dimension concerns whether the emphasis is on local or wider contexts—

whether the focus is micro or macro. Microethnography emphasizes the role of immediate context in shaping action. In contrast, other kinds of qualitative research insist that we cannot understand what goes on in any local situation without viewing it within the context of the larger national society or, indeed, of global processes.

A second dimension concerns how context is to be identified. Some see social context as socially defined by participants. The researcher’s task, therefore, is to document how people interpret the situation they are in, either by means of in-depth interviews or through close analysis of processes of social interaction. For example, those influenced by conversation analysis argue that contextualization is ongoingly accom- plished through actors displaying the context of their actions to one another, with this being essential to communication and the coordination of action. The task of the analyst, then, is to document how contexts are displayed and ratified in and through processes of social interaction.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who see the specification of context as the task of the analyst, drawing on theory. Here the very rationale for research is that people will not be aware of the context

in terms of which their actions can be properly under- stood. This is because relevant parts of this context will be either below or beyond their awareness—

whether in the form of unconscious psychodynamic processes, macrohistorical structures, or both.

A third dimension concerns the ontological status of any definition of context. Is it discovered or con- structed? All of the approaches discussed up to now tend to treat context as an objective feature of the world being studied. However, other qualitative researchers treat context as necessarily relative to pur- pose and perspective. It is argued that, in understand- ing anything, the analyst cannot avoid relying on inherited background assumptions, and these provide the context for what is observed. Nor does this process need to be interpreted in entirely cognitivist terms; the role of emotional response may also be acknowl- edged. There is an alternative version of this argument that can be termed postmodernist in broad terms. Here context is essentially arbitrary; there are many incom- mensurable contexts in which we could locate what we are studying in the sense that a host of stories could be told. There is no notion of validity, in the sense of correspondence with reality, on which we can draw to privilege one definition of context over another. Other selection criteria—political, ethical, or aesthetic—must be used. Moreover, none of these can be treated as being of universal value.

Involved in these various approaches to identifying context are quite fundamental differences in view about the purpose and character of social science. At the same time, much qualitative research mixes these orientations to one degree or another. For example, it generally seeks both to take account of how people define the contexts in which they act and to provide more analytic characterizations of context for the pur- pose of explaining their actions. Furthermore, although few researchers adopt what we label here as the post- modernist position, many acknowledge the extent to which the analyses they produce reflect who they are.

The concept of context is also implicated in ideas about what qualitative inquiry produces. It is often argued that quantitative methods seek to produce abstract general knowledge about social and psycho- logical processes, whereas qualitative research is idio- graphic in character, being concerned with providing thick descriptions of particular contexts. Sometimes this amounts to a denial that generalization is possi- ble; instead, readers must use these thick descriptions to make sense of new situations for themselves, engaging in a form of naturalistic generalization.

122———Context and Contextuality

Of course, many qualitative researchers do seek to develop general theoretical models, but at the same time they seek to give due attention to the particulari- ties of the cases they study. This is true, for example, of those working in the tradition of grounded theoriz- ing. Here, and elsewhere, there is an attempt to blend the idiographic and nomothetic.

One area of qualitative inquiry that throws up issues about context in an especially interesting and difficult way is the study of online communities.

Some researchers treat context here as entirely that which is enacted on the relevant websites. Others insist that people’s online and offline lives are usually interwoven in complex ways so that a much broader focus must be adopted.

Another area that highlights the issue of context is the reuse of archived qualitative data. Can those data provide access to the original context in which a study was done? Can they be “reconceptualized” in a way that both retains their integrity and provides the basis for a new analysis? Here all of the problems surround- ing context outlined above reemerge in various ways.

The notion of context, then, is central to qualitative inquiry. At the same time, it is a complex and con- tested concept.

Martyn Hammersley

See alsoConversation Analysis; Emic/Etic Distinction;

Generalizability; Indexicality; Virtual Ethnography:

Virtual Research

Further Readings

Burawoy, M., Blum, J. A., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., Klawiter, M., Lopez, S. H., Riain, S., &

Thayer, M. (2000).Global ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cole, M., Engestrom, Y., & Vasquez, O. A. (Eds.). (1997).

Mind, culture, and activity: Seminal papers from the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hine, C. (Ed.). (2005).Virtual methods: Issues in social research on the internet.Oxford, UK: Berg.

Moore, N. (2006). The contexts of context: Broadening perspectives in the (re)use of qualitative data.

Methodological Innovations Online, 1(2). Retrieved from http://erdt.plymouth.ac.uk/mionline/public_html/viewarticle .php?id=27&layout=html

Schegloff, E. A. (1997). Whose text? Whose context?

Discourse and Society, 8,165–187.