Research Design: a Content Analysis

Research Design

Content analysis is a process in which narrative data are divided into units of analysis to examine the contents of a particular body of material for the purpose of identifying patterns, themes or biases (Leedy and Ormrod, (2005). Further, qualitative content analysis has been defined in other ways such as: • “a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text or [narrative] data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1278), • “an approach of empirical, methodological controlled analysis of [narrative] texts within their context of communication, following content analytic rules and step …show more content…

The coding was done in this way so input into the data analysis software (SPSS) would produce the most reliable results. Williams (2003) posits coding data in qualitative analysis sometimes resembles quantitative research data analysis at the beginning of content analysis. Because the questionnaire and the sample population were small, the process of coding was not laborious. Williams (2003) contends when data is coded after the questionnaire is created, the margin for error and observer bias is enhanced. The following is a matrix illustrating the four participants who responded to the emailed questionnaire: Health Maintenance Questionnaire Responses
|(Sample) |Q1 (Q #1) |Q2 (Q#2) |Q3 (Q#3) |Q4 (Q#4) |Q5 (Q#5) | |
|P1 |YES - 1 |NO - 2 |NO – 2 |YES - 3 |NO - 2 | |
|P2 |NO - 2 |YES - 1 |YES – 1 |YES - 1 |YES - 1 | |
|P3 |NRSP - 3 |YES - 1 |YES – 1 |YES - 1 |YES – 1 | |
|P4 |YES - 1 |YES - 1 |YES – 1 |YES - 1 |YES – 1 | |

Characteristics of the Data By definition, the main