gssr research methodology and methods of social inquiry january 10, 2012 research using available...
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GSSR
Research Methodology and Methods of Social Inquiry
www.socialinquiry.wordpress.com
January 10, 2012
Research Using Available Data
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Research Using Available Data
(Secondary Analysis)
- use of already existing sources of data;
- generally refers to re-analysis of quantitative data;
However: Content analysis
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Content Analysis
- analysis of text documents; - typically, the major purpose = identification of patterns in
text; - unobtrusive; - can be a relatively rapid method for analyzing large
amounts of text.
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Involves:
- selecting and defining a set of content categories;- defining & then sampling the elements of the text that
are described by the categories;
- quantifying the categories (ex. frequency of occurrence)
- analyzing the data: relating content categories to one another, or to other variables.
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Thematic analysis of text
The identification of themes or major ideas in a document or set of documents
(field notes, newspaper articles, technical papers, organizational memos, …)
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Indexing
- wide variety of automated methods for rapidly indexing text documents.
Ex: Key Words in Context (KWIC) analysis = computer analysis of text data.
Key word = any term in the text that is not included in an exception dictionary (exception dictionary includes all non-essential words like "is", "and", and "of").
All key words are alphabetized & are listed with the text that precedes and follows it, so the researcher can see the word in the context in which it occurred in the text.
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Quantitative descriptive analysis
- describe features of the text quantitatively
Basic systems of enumeration
1. Time/space measures; Ex: space devoted to certain topics in newspaper articles;
2. Appearance; when does a category appear in the text;
3. Frequency; Assumptions:
a) frequency of a category is a valid indicator of its importance, value, intensity;
b) each individual count is of equal importance, value or intensity;
4. Intensity-devise mechanisms to judge the intensity of the category
(similar to constructing scales and indexes).
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Likely Methodological Problems
a) the types of information available in text form are limited
b) Bias due to sampling
c) Bias due to (mis)interpreting results of automated content analyses