critical content analysis as a research methodology

Skip to content

Read the latest news stories about Mailman faculty, research, and events. 

Departments

We integrate an innovative skills-based curriculum, research collaborations, and hands-on field experience to prepare students.

Learn more about our research centers, which focus on critical issues in public health.

Our Faculty

Meet the faculty of the Mailman School of Public Health. 

Become a Student

Life and community, how to apply.

Learn how to apply to the Mailman School of Public Health. 

Content Analysis

Content analysis is a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts within some given qualitative data (i.e. text). Using content analysis, researchers can quantify and analyze the presence, meanings, and relationships of such certain words, themes, or concepts. As an example, researchers can evaluate language used within a news article to search for bias or partiality. Researchers can then make inferences about the messages within the texts, the writer(s), the audience, and even the culture and time of surrounding the text.

Description

Sources of data could be from interviews, open-ended questions, field research notes, conversations, or literally any occurrence of communicative language (such as books, essays, discussions, newspaper headlines, speeches, media, historical documents). A single study may analyze various forms of text in its analysis. To analyze the text using content analysis, the text must be coded, or broken down, into manageable code categories for analysis (i.e. “codes”). Once the text is coded into code categories, the codes can then be further categorized into “code categories” to summarize data even further.

Three different definitions of content analysis are provided below.

Definition 1: “Any technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively identifying special characteristics of messages.” (from Holsti, 1968)

Definition 2: “An interpretive and naturalistic approach. It is both observational and narrative in nature and relies less on the experimental elements normally associated with scientific research (reliability, validity, and generalizability) (from Ethnography, Observational Research, and Narrative Inquiry, 1994-2012).

Definition 3: “A research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication.” (from Berelson, 1952)

Uses of Content Analysis

Identify the intentions, focus or communication trends of an individual, group or institution

Describe attitudinal and behavioral responses to communications

Determine the psychological or emotional state of persons or groups

Reveal international differences in communication content

Reveal patterns in communication content

Pre-test and improve an intervention or survey prior to launch

Analyze focus group interviews and open-ended questions to complement quantitative data

Types of Content Analysis

There are two general types of content analysis: conceptual analysis and relational analysis. Conceptual analysis determines the existence and frequency of concepts in a text. Relational analysis develops the conceptual analysis further by examining the relationships among concepts in a text. Each type of analysis may lead to different results, conclusions, interpretations and meanings.

Conceptual Analysis

Typically people think of conceptual analysis when they think of content analysis. In conceptual analysis, a concept is chosen for examination and the analysis involves quantifying and counting its presence. The main goal is to examine the occurrence of selected terms in the data. Terms may be explicit or implicit. Explicit terms are easy to identify. Coding of implicit terms is more complicated: you need to decide the level of implication and base judgments on subjectivity (an issue for reliability and validity). Therefore, coding of implicit terms involves using a dictionary or contextual translation rules or both.

To begin a conceptual content analysis, first identify the research question and choose a sample or samples for analysis. Next, the text must be coded into manageable content categories. This is basically a process of selective reduction. By reducing the text to categories, the researcher can focus on and code for specific words or patterns that inform the research question.

General steps for conducting a conceptual content analysis:

1. Decide the level of analysis: word, word sense, phrase, sentence, themes

2. Decide how many concepts to code for: develop a pre-defined or interactive set of categories or concepts. Decide either: A. to allow flexibility to add categories through the coding process, or B. to stick with the pre-defined set of categories.

Option A allows for the introduction and analysis of new and important material that could have significant implications to one’s research question.

Option B allows the researcher to stay focused and examine the data for specific concepts.

3. Decide whether to code for existence or frequency of a concept. The decision changes the coding process.

When coding for the existence of a concept, the researcher would count a concept only once if it appeared at least once in the data and no matter how many times it appeared.

When coding for the frequency of a concept, the researcher would count the number of times a concept appears in a text.

4. Decide on how you will distinguish among concepts:

Should text be coded exactly as they appear or coded as the same when they appear in different forms? For example, “dangerous” vs. “dangerousness”. The point here is to create coding rules so that these word segments are transparently categorized in a logical fashion. The rules could make all of these word segments fall into the same category, or perhaps the rules can be formulated so that the researcher can distinguish these word segments into separate codes.

What level of implication is to be allowed? Words that imply the concept or words that explicitly state the concept? For example, “dangerous” vs. “the person is scary” vs. “that person could cause harm to me”. These word segments may not merit separate categories, due the implicit meaning of “dangerous”.

5. Develop rules for coding your texts. After decisions of steps 1-4 are complete, a researcher can begin developing rules for translation of text into codes. This will keep the coding process organized and consistent. The researcher can code for exactly what he/she wants to code. Validity of the coding process is ensured when the researcher is consistent and coherent in their codes, meaning that they follow their translation rules. In content analysis, obeying by the translation rules is equivalent to validity.

6. Decide what to do with irrelevant information: should this be ignored (e.g. common English words like “the” and “and”), or used to reexamine the coding scheme in the case that it would add to the outcome of coding?

7. Code the text: This can be done by hand or by using software. By using software, researchers can input categories and have coding done automatically, quickly and efficiently, by the software program. When coding is done by hand, a researcher can recognize errors far more easily (e.g. typos, misspelling). If using computer coding, text could be cleaned of errors to include all available data. This decision of hand vs. computer coding is most relevant for implicit information where category preparation is essential for accurate coding.

8. Analyze your results: Draw conclusions and generalizations where possible. Determine what to do with irrelevant, unwanted, or unused text: reexamine, ignore, or reassess the coding scheme. Interpret results carefully as conceptual content analysis can only quantify the information. Typically, general trends and patterns can be identified.

Relational Analysis

Relational analysis begins like conceptual analysis, where a concept is chosen for examination. However, the analysis involves exploring the relationships between concepts. Individual concepts are viewed as having no inherent meaning and rather the meaning is a product of the relationships among concepts.

To begin a relational content analysis, first identify a research question and choose a sample or samples for analysis. The research question must be focused so the concept types are not open to interpretation and can be summarized. Next, select text for analysis. Select text for analysis carefully by balancing having enough information for a thorough analysis so results are not limited with having information that is too extensive so that the coding process becomes too arduous and heavy to supply meaningful and worthwhile results.

There are three subcategories of relational analysis to choose from prior to going on to the general steps.

Affect extraction: an emotional evaluation of concepts explicit in a text. A challenge to this method is that emotions can vary across time, populations, and space. However, it could be effective at capturing the emotional and psychological state of the speaker or writer of the text.

Proximity analysis: an evaluation of the co-occurrence of explicit concepts in the text. Text is defined as a string of words called a “window” that is scanned for the co-occurrence of concepts. The result is the creation of a “concept matrix”, or a group of interrelated co-occurring concepts that would suggest an overall meaning.

Cognitive mapping: a visualization technique for either affect extraction or proximity analysis. Cognitive mapping attempts to create a model of the overall meaning of the text such as a graphic map that represents the relationships between concepts.

General steps for conducting a relational content analysis:

1. Determine the type of analysis: Once the sample has been selected, the researcher needs to determine what types of relationships to examine and the level of analysis: word, word sense, phrase, sentence, themes. 2. Reduce the text to categories and code for words or patterns. A researcher can code for existence of meanings or words. 3. Explore the relationship between concepts: once the words are coded, the text can be analyzed for the following:

Strength of relationship: degree to which two or more concepts are related.

Sign of relationship: are concepts positively or negatively related to each other?

Direction of relationship: the types of relationship that categories exhibit. For example, “X implies Y” or “X occurs before Y” or “if X then Y” or if X is the primary motivator of Y.

4. Code the relationships: a difference between conceptual and relational analysis is that the statements or relationships between concepts are coded. 5. Perform statistical analyses: explore differences or look for relationships among the identified variables during coding. 6. Map out representations: such as decision mapping and mental models.

Reliability and Validity

Reliability : Because of the human nature of researchers, coding errors can never be eliminated but only minimized. Generally, 80% is an acceptable margin for reliability. Three criteria comprise the reliability of a content analysis:

Stability: the tendency for coders to consistently re-code the same data in the same way over a period of time.

Reproducibility: tendency for a group of coders to classify categories membership in the same way.

Accuracy: extent to which the classification of text corresponds to a standard or norm statistically.

Validity : Three criteria comprise the validity of a content analysis:

Closeness of categories: this can be achieved by utilizing multiple classifiers to arrive at an agreed upon definition of each specific category. Using multiple classifiers, a concept category that may be an explicit variable can be broadened to include synonyms or implicit variables.

Conclusions: What level of implication is allowable? Do conclusions correctly follow the data? Are results explainable by other phenomena? This becomes especially problematic when using computer software for analysis and distinguishing between synonyms. For example, the word “mine,” variously denotes a personal pronoun, an explosive device, and a deep hole in the ground from which ore is extracted. Software can obtain an accurate count of that word’s occurrence and frequency, but not be able to produce an accurate accounting of the meaning inherent in each particular usage. This problem could throw off one’s results and make any conclusion invalid.

Generalizability of the results to a theory: dependent on the clear definitions of concept categories, how they are determined and how reliable they are at measuring the idea one is seeking to measure. Generalizability parallels reliability as much of it depends on the three criteria for reliability.

Advantages of Content Analysis

Directly examines communication using text

Allows for both qualitative and quantitative analysis

Provides valuable historical and cultural insights over time

Allows a closeness to data

Coded form of the text can be statistically analyzed

Unobtrusive means of analyzing interactions

Provides insight into complex models of human thought and language use

When done well, is considered a relatively “exact” research method

Content analysis is a readily-understood and an inexpensive research method

A more powerful tool when combined with other research methods such as interviews, observation, and use of archival records. It is very useful for analyzing historical material, especially for documenting trends over time.

Disadvantages of Content Analysis

Can be extremely time consuming

Is subject to increased error, particularly when relational analysis is used to attain a higher level of interpretation

Is often devoid of theoretical base, or attempts too liberally to draw meaningful inferences about the relationships and impacts implied in a study

Is inherently reductive, particularly when dealing with complex texts

Tends too often to simply consist of word counts

Often disregards the context that produced the text, as well as the state of things after the text is produced

Can be difficult to automate or computerize

Textbooks & Chapters  

Berelson, Bernard. Content Analysis in Communication Research.New York: Free Press, 1952.

Busha, Charles H. and Stephen P. Harter. Research Methods in Librarianship: Techniques and Interpretation.New York: Academic Press, 1980.

de Sola Pool, Ithiel. Trends in Content Analysis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1959.

Krippendorff, Klaus. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980.

Fielding, NG & Lee, RM. Using Computers in Qualitative Research. SAGE Publications, 1991. (Refer to Chapter by Seidel, J. ‘Method and Madness in the Application of Computer Technology to Qualitative Data Analysis’.)

Methodological Articles  

Hsieh HF & Shannon SE. (2005). Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis.Qualitative Health Research. 15(9): 1277-1288.

Elo S, Kaarianinen M, Kanste O, Polkki R, Utriainen K, & Kyngas H. (2014). Qualitative Content Analysis: A focus on trustworthiness. Sage Open. 4:1-10.

Application Articles  

Abroms LC, Padmanabhan N, Thaweethai L, & Phillips T. (2011). iPhone Apps for Smoking Cessation: A content analysis. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 40(3):279-285.

Ullstrom S. Sachs MA, Hansson J, Ovretveit J, & Brommels M. (2014). Suffering in Silence: a qualitative study of second victims of adverse events. British Medical Journal, Quality & Safety Issue. 23:325-331.

Owen P. (2012).Portrayals of Schizophrenia by Entertainment Media: A Content Analysis of Contemporary Movies. Psychiatric Services. 63:655-659.

Choosing whether to conduct a content analysis by hand or by using computer software can be difficult. Refer to ‘Method and Madness in the Application of Computer Technology to Qualitative Data Analysis’ listed above in “Textbooks and Chapters” for a discussion of the issue.

QSR NVivo:  http://www.qsrinternational.com/products.aspx

Atlas.ti:  http://www.atlasti.com/webinars.html

R- RQDA package:  http://rqda.r-forge.r-project.org/

Rolly Constable, Marla Cowell, Sarita Zornek Crawford, David Golden, Jake Hartvigsen, Kathryn Morgan, Anne Mudgett, Kris Parrish, Laura Thomas, Erika Yolanda Thompson, Rosie Turner, and Mike Palmquist. (1994-2012). Ethnography, Observational Research, and Narrative Inquiry. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University. Available at: https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=63 .

As an introduction to Content Analysis by Michael Palmquist, this is the main resource on Content Analysis on the Web. It is comprehensive, yet succinct. It includes examples and an annotated bibliography. The information contained in the narrative above draws heavily from and summarizes Michael Palmquist’s excellent resource on Content Analysis but was streamlined for the purpose of doctoral students and junior researchers in epidemiology.

At Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, more detailed training is available through the Department of Sociomedical Sciences- P8785 Qualitative Research Methods.

Join the Conversation

Have a question about methods? Join us on Facebook

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, automatically generate references for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Methodology

Content Analysis | A Step-by-Step Guide with Examples

Published on 5 May 2022 by Amy Luo . Revised on 5 December 2022.

Content analysis is a research method used to identify patterns in recorded communication. To conduct content analysis, you systematically collect data from a set of texts, which can be written, oral, or visual:

• Books, newspapers, and magazines
• Speeches and interviews
• Web content and social media posts
• Photographs and films

Content analysis can be both quantitative (focused on counting and measuring) and qualitative (focused on interpreting and understanding). In both types, you categorise or ‘code’ words, themes, and concepts within the texts and then analyse the results.

Table of contents

What is content analysis used for, advantages of content analysis, disadvantages of content analysis, how to conduct content analysis.

Researchers use content analysis to find out about the purposes, messages, and effects of communication content. They can also make inferences about the producers and audience of the texts they analyse.

Content analysis can be used to quantify the occurrence of certain words, phrases, subjects, or concepts in a set of historical or contemporary texts.

In addition, content analysis can be used to make qualitative inferences by analysing the meaning and semantic relationship of words and concepts.

Because content analysis can be applied to a broad range of texts, it is used in a variety of fields, including marketing, media studies, anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, and many social science disciplines. It has various possible goals:

• Finding correlations and patterns in how concepts are communicated
• Understanding the intentions of an individual, group, or institution
• Identifying propaganda and bias in communication
• Revealing differences in communication in different contexts
• Analysing the consequences of communication content, such as the flow of information or audience responses

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

• Unobtrusive data collection

You can analyse communication and social interaction without the direct involvement of participants, so your presence as a researcher doesn’t influence the results.

• Transparent and replicable

When done well, content analysis follows a systematic procedure that can easily be replicated by other researchers, yielding results with high reliability .

• Highly flexible

You can conduct content analysis at any time, in any location, and at low cost. All you need is access to the appropriate sources.

Focusing on words or phrases in isolation can sometimes be overly reductive, disregarding context, nuance, and ambiguous meanings.

Content analysis almost always involves some level of subjective interpretation, which can affect the reliability and validity of the results and conclusions.

• Time intensive

Manually coding large volumes of text is extremely time-consuming, and it can be difficult to automate effectively.

If you want to use content analysis in your research, you need to start with a clear, direct  research question .

Next, you follow these five steps.

Step 1: Select the content you will analyse

Based on your research question, choose the texts that you will analyse. You need to decide:

• The medium (e.g., newspapers, speeches, or websites) and genre (e.g., opinion pieces, political campaign speeches, or marketing copy)
• The criteria for inclusion (e.g., newspaper articles that mention a particular event, speeches by a certain politician, or websites selling a specific type of product)
• The parameters in terms of date range, location, etc.

If there are only a small number of texts that meet your criteria, you might analyse all of them. If there is a large volume of texts, you can select a sample .

Step 2: Define the units and categories of analysis

Next, you need to determine the level at which you will analyse your chosen texts. This means defining:

• The unit(s) of meaning that will be coded. For example, are you going to record the frequency of individual words and phrases, the characteristics of people who produced or appear in the texts, the presence and positioning of images, or the treatment of themes and concepts?
• The set of categories that you will use for coding. Categories can be objective characteristics (e.g., aged 30–40, lawyer, parent) or more conceptual (e.g., trustworthy, corrupt, conservative, family-oriented).

Step 3: Develop a set of rules for coding

Coding involves organising the units of meaning into the previously defined categories. Especially with more conceptual categories, it’s important to clearly define the rules for what will and won’t be included to ensure that all texts are coded consistently.

Coding rules are especially important if multiple researchers are involved, but even if you’re coding all of the text by yourself, recording the rules makes your method more transparent and reliable.

Step 4: Code the text according to the rules

You go through each text and record all relevant data in the appropriate categories. This can be done manually or aided with computer programs, such as QSR NVivo , Atlas.ti , and Diction , which can help speed up the process of counting and categorising words and phrases.

Step 5: Analyse the results and draw conclusions

Once coding is complete, the collected data is examined to find patterns and draw conclusions in response to your research question. You might use statistical analysis to find correlations or trends, discuss your interpretations of what the results mean, and make inferences about the creators, context, and audience of the texts.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Luo, A. (2022, December 05). Content Analysis | A Step-by-Step Guide with Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 3 June 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/research-methods/content-analysis-explained/

Is this article helpful?

Other students also liked

How to do thematic analysis | guide & examples, data collection methods | step-by-step guide & examples, qualitative vs quantitative research | examples & methods.

Critical content analysis as a research methodology

• Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies
• Second Language Acquisition / Teaching - GIDP

Research output : Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

ASJC Scopus subject areas

• General Arts and Humanities
• General Social Sciences

Access to Document

• 10.4324/9781315651927

Other files and links

• Link to publication in Scopus

T1 - Critical content analysis as a research methodology

AU - Worlds of Words Community

AU - Short, Kathy G.

PY - 2016/6/17

Y1 - 2016/6/17

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85020998500&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85020998500&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.4324/9781315651927

DO - 10.4324/9781315651927

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85020998500

SN - 9781138120082

BT - Critical Content Analysis of Children's and Young Adult Literature

PB - Taylor and Francis Inc.

Critical Content Analysis: A Flexible Method for Thinking with Theory

• Jamie Utt University of Arizona
• Kathy G. Short University of Arizona

Critical Content Analysis is an explicit method for the study of text that also offers flexibility in theoretical approach and textual selection. In this introduction to the Understanding and Dismantling Privilege special issue featuring Critical Content Analysis focusing on race, racism, and racial oppression, we introduce the method itself and highlight the flexibility of the Critical Content Analysis. Additionally, we highlight the ways that thinking with theory differentiates Critical Content Analysis from other forms of textual analysis and is central to the critical nature of the method.

Author Biographies

Jamie utt, university of arizona, kathy g. short, university of arizona.

Kathy G. Short is a professor in Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona and Director of Worlds of Words, an initiative to build intercultural understanding through global children’s literature. Her recent books include  Teaching Globally: Reading the World through Literature  and  Critical Content Analysis of Children’s and Young Adult Literature. She   is a past President of NCTE and USBBY. 

How to Cite

• Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)

This journal is an academic publication. Its sole purpose is the dissemination of knowledge to as wide an audience as possible. The journal is free to individuals and institutions.

Copyrights for contributions published in this journal are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Copies of this journal or articles in this journal may be distributed for research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. However commercial use of the journal or the articles contained herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the author.

NOTE TO AUTHORS:   A new model, the Creative Commons approach, with split copyright is rapidly evolving and worth considering.

http://creativecommons.org/choose/

Developed By

Current issue, information.

• For Readers
• For Authors
• For Librarians

The Understanding & Dismantling Privilege journal is sponsored by The Privilege Institute.

An Introduction to Critical Approaches

• First Online: 29 September 2022

Cite this chapter

• Robert E. White   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8045-164X 3 &
• Karyn Cooper 4  

1393 Accesses

As can be understood from the previous chapter, in qualitative research, words are used as data rather than numerical representations (Miles & Huberman, 1994). All qualitative methods rely on linguistic information rather than on statistical evidence. As such, they tend to employ meaning-based (as opposed to numerical-based) data analysis (Polkinghorne, 1983). Thus, qualitative research utilizes data in the form of text, which, in turn, serves to furnish a detailed analysis of a situation, a case, a subject or an event through original analysis (Creswell, 2013). In qualitative research, data is usually collected and analyzed on fewer participants and situations (Patton, 2014) than is commonly found in quantitative research practices. The previous chapter introduced a short history of qualitative research as it relates to quantitative research endeavours. The current chapter devotes itself to a discussion of a number of approaches to qualitative research, specifically the critical approach.

The reliance on personal experience is the main building block, the main distinction of qualitative research. Not so much feelings, not so much how do we feel about things, but what is the experience as felt, as told, as manifest in the things that we do. Robert Stake, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method . University of California Press.

Google Scholar  

Butler, T. (1998). Towards a hermeneutic method for interpretive research in information systems. Journal of Information Technology, 13 (4), 285–300.

Article   Google Scholar  

Collins, H. (2010). Creative research: The theory and practice of research for the creative industries . AVA Publications.

Comte, A. (1908). A general view of positivism (Trans. J. A. Bridges). Routledge.

Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the post-modern era: Contexts of qualitative research . Springer.

Book   Google Scholar  

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Sage.

Crossman, A. (2017). What is positivism in sociology? Background and theory of positivism . Retrieved October 25, 2017 from https://www.thoughtco.com/positivism-sociology-3026456

Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language . Prentice Hall.

Feyerabend, P. (1975). Against method: Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge . New Left Books.

Goldkuhl, G. (2012). Pragmatism vs. interpretivism in qualitative information systems research. European Journal of Information Systems, 21 (2), 135–146.

Henning, E., Van Rensburg, W., & Smit, B. (2004). Finding your way in qualitative research . Van Schaik Publishers.

Horgan, J. (1993). Profile: Paul Karl Feyerabend—The worst enemy of science. Scientific American, 268 (5), 36–37.

Krippendorff, K. H. (2003). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology . Sage.

Marx, K. (1867/2012). Das kapital: A critique of political economy . Regnery Publishing.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, M. A. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded source book (2nd ed.). Sage.

Myers, M., & Avison, D. (2002). An introduction to qualitative research in information systems. In M. Myers & D. Avison (Eds.), Qualitative research in information systems: A reader . Sage.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Ong, Y. S. (2016). Reexamining education research methodologies—Collaborative rather than competitive. Bulgarian Journal of Science & Education Policy, 10 (1), 124–141.

Orbe, M. P., & Kinefuchi, E. (2008). Crash under investigation: Engaging complications of complicity, coherence, and implicature through critical analysis. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25 (2), 135–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295030802032275

Orlikowski, W. J., & Baroudi, J. J. (1991). Studying information technology in organizations: Research approaches and assumptions. Information Systems Research, 2 (1), 1–28.

Patton, M. Q. (2014). Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory & practice (4th ed.). Sage.

Polkinghorne, D. (1983). Methodology for the human sciences . Human Sciences Press.

Popper, K. R. (1979). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach . Oxford University Press.

Shusterman, R. (2004). Pragmatism and East-Asian thought. Metaphilosophy, 35 (1/2), 13–43.

Thomas, V. G., & Madison, A. (2010). Integration of social justice into the teaching of evaluation. American Journal of Evaluation, 31 (4), 570–583. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214010368426

Trauth, E. M. (Ed.). (2001). Qualitative research in IS: Issues and trends . Idea Group.

Willis, J. W. (2007). Foundations of qualitative research: Interpretive and critical approaches . Sage.

Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy . University of Chicago Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Education, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

Robert E. White

OISE, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Karyn Cooper

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert E. White .

Transformative Potentials of Critical Educational Inquiry

Emma Simmons

The foundational questions to critical work are: Who/what is helped/privileged/legitimated? Who/what is harmed/oppressed/disqualified?

(Cannella & Lincoln, 2009, p. 54)

Critical inquiry has been criticized for creating illusions of justice and being unable to transform the situations of the oppressed. Critics have voiced concerns for the paradoxical nature of critical inquiry, arguing that by providing alternative understandings of social phenomena, critical inquirers send a message that the oppressed are partly responsible for their situations due to their lack of “ appropriate” knowledge. In this article, we discuss the transformative potentials of critical educational inquiry. We use five contexts of qualitative research, namely, autobiographical, historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical to explore the possibilities of critical inquiry in educational research. We also use an article by Deborah Hicks (2005) to exemplify how critical research may be transformative and empowering by involving the researched in a process of inquiry characterized by negotiation and reciprocity.

critical inquiry, educational research, contexts of qualitative research, empowerment

Introduction

Critical theory generally refers to the theoretical traditions developed by a number of scholars affiliated with the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in the mid-twentieth century. This group of scholars, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, situated this inquiry within German philosophical, social, and political thoughts and traditions. Very soon, the life and work of these scholars were heavily influenced by the devastation of World War I, along with resulting economic crises and political instability. They believed that reinterpretations of society were necessary, during an infamous period in history, when various forms of injustice and subjugation were shaping their world. Unfortunately, only a decade after the establishment of the Frankfurt School, the Nazis overtook Germany in body and mind. The leading scholars of the Frankfurt School decided (or were forced) to move to the United States. However, they were shocked by many aspects of American culture, especially the unquestioned acceptance of empirical practices of American social science research. In 1953, Horkheimer and Adorno decided to return to Germany in order to revitalize the Institute of Social Research, but Marcuse chose to stay in the United States and continue his work in social science research and theorization (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011).

All members of the Frankfurt School championed a vision of a more just society, in which people have not only an equal access to desirable things but also control over the economic, political and cultural aspects of their lives. They argued that the oppressed and exploited people would be emancipated only if they were empowered to transform their situations by themselves. This theoretical tradition is called “critical” because the promoters of this theory “saw the route to emancipation as being a kind of self-conscious critique which problematizes all social relations, in particular those of and within the discursive practices of power, especially technical rationalism” (Tripp, 1992, p. 13).

Although frequently referenced in social science literature, critical theory has also been misinterpreted, misunderstood and accused of being patriarchal and re-inscribing old power structures. For example, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) famously questioned the ability of critical theory to empower the oppressed and transform their situations. To avoid confusion in our discussion, we conceptualize critical theory as a framework to understand “issues of power and justice and the ways that the economy; matters of race, class, and gender; ideologies; discourses; education; religion and other social institutions; and cultural dynamics interact to construct a social system” (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011, p. 288).

Because of its emancipatory nature, critical theory is different from traditional empiricist theories in three important ways (Schwandt, 2007). First, it is a self-reflective, democratic discourse in the sense that it relinquishes normative and accepted understandings of the social order and adopts a lens of critical reconsideration. Second, unlike the empiricist tradition in which the theorist is disinterested in and detached from the research subjects, critical inquiry is closely related to praxis [i.e., action + reflection = word = work = praxis] (for details, see Freire, 1970). Third, critical inquiry “employs the method of immanent critique, working from within categories of existing thought in order to radicalize those categories, reveal their internal contradictions and shortcomings, and demonstrate their unrecognized possibilities” (Schwandt, 2007, p. 55). Therefore, when research is carried out from the perspectives of critical theory, it aims to identify various forms of power and “seeks in its analyses to plumb the archaeology of taken-for-granted perspectives to understand how unjust and oppressive social conditions came to be reified as historical ‘givens’” (Cannella & Lincoln, 2009, p. 54).

The critical theory tradition has been taken into the field of education by a number of scholars, “but most notably by Paulo Freire in his work with oppressed minorities which gave rise to the term critical pedagogy , meaning teaching-learning from within the principles of critical theory” (Tripp, 1992, p. 13). Other scholars, such as Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Joe Kincheloe and Peter McLaren have taken up critical theory to unpack politics of education, epistemological violence, control of teachers and learners, commodification of knowledge, and how schools reproduce social, economic, political, and cultural inequalities. In addition to identifying these oppressive roles of education, they have also provided the language of possibility .

In this article, we explore critical inquiry through five contexts, namely, autobiographical, historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical. Karyn Cooper and Robert White (2012) propose these five contexts as “a theoretical framework for conducting, understanding, and interpreting qualitative research” (p. 23). Throughout our exploration, we use Deborah Hicks’ (2005) article “Cultural hauntings: Girlhood fictions from working-poor America” as an example of reflexive, advocacy-centred critical inquiry. In this article, Hicks delineates links between third and fourth-grade girls’ fascination with horror fiction, layered dimensions of their voice and identity, and the complexities of growing up in a predominantly white working-poor community. Using the five contexts of qualitative research (Cooper & White, 2012) as a theoretical framework with reference to Hicks (2005), as an example of critical inquiry, we present our analysis of and insights into the possibilities for and realities for empowerment in critical education research.

Autobiographical Context

One of the over-arching aims of critical inquiry is to include various perspectives in academia and to acknowledge that the stories and voices of particular groups have long been underrepresented in conversation of research. Critical inquiry has paved the way for, and continues to incorporate, the lenses of feminist theory, critical race theory and class analyses, among others, and ultimately seeks to challenge the canonical frames of academia that have allowed for only one reality. The autobiographical context provides a step forward in that challenge, and many practitioners of critical inquiry have used the autobiographical context both to inform their larger critiques and also to situate themselves within the larger discourse. Race and gender theorists such as Gloria Anzaldua (1987), bell hooks (1994), and Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997) weave their autobiographies throughout their critical analyses in order to establish the inextricability between their lived experience and their perspective regarding the world around them.

As described in Cooper and White (2012), the autobiographical context is a way to highlight the researcher’s own perspective in order to better establish a connection between researcher, researched and reader, as well as to contextualize the research produced. Without an autobiographical context, the researcher and, in fact, the research itself would be disembodied and without a human source. As a reader, one would be unable to understand both the insights and the blind spots that the researcher brings to an investigation without an understanding of the author’s preconceived ideologies and experiences: “To use a metaphor, viewing a work of art without contextualizing it in terms of our knowledge about the artist tends to limit our understanding of the painting itself” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 33). Before theorists in the latter half of the 20 th century began to call into question the positionalities within the academy, the autobiography of the researcher was hidden, leading to an inability to trust the work produced, and an “othering” of the subject.

Referencing William Pinar, Cooper and White (2012) highlight the use of autobiography in research, noting that it need not be a self-indulgent exercise. Pinar demonstrates, through his method of currere, that autobiography is a part of a larger context. His four steps allow researchers to incorporate their lived experiences into their larger research and, in fact, study themselves in order to ask and understand the question, “What do I make of what I have been made?” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 34). As critical inquiry attempts to inspire new ways of thinking, it simultaneously follows the steps that Pinar lays out—regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical. These steps give us the opportunity first to look back on our formative experiences, then forward to where we desire to go. The third step looks at our present, while being informed by our past and future and, fourth, we bring all three pieces together in order to understand our ways of understanding (Pinar, 1975).

Hicks’ (2005) relies heavily on the autobiographical context to perform her critical inquiry. Within her analysis, she interweaves her own autobiography, as well as those of her students. Hicks’ voice as the researcher and author is never lost within her writing; her choices, observations and interactions are always deeply embedded within her work. In fact, the writing/research process and the choices she has made within that are all reflective of her positionality, and she makes no secret of that. In so doing, she avoids the problem of the researcher’s gaze which, gone unmentioned, can affect the ways in which the reader sees the subjects of the research, ultimately skewing the reader’s response and, perhaps in turn, any action taken as a result of her research. As Cooper and White (2012) discuss, by being autobiographically expository, one ensures that both researcher and reader are using the same tools to understand and view the subjects of the research. By revealing our subjectivity, we actually allow more space for our reader to be objective.

In addition to being honest about her own autobiography, we would also argue that Hicks presents what functions almost as an autobiography of the community where she conducted her research. More than simply contextualizing her students’ narratives, the way in which she describes the setting of the classroom leads the reader to feel as if the place is in and of itself. She describes its position on the economic margins of the city by stating that the middle-class “might drive through on the way to something else, noting in passing the ghostly frames of abandoned warehouses or the thick, gray smoke churned out from one of the few working factories” (p. 172).

While this contextualization also has its place in discussions of both the historical and political context, it is raised here as well. Hicks regards the space that her subjects live in with her particular eye and mindset, and gives a specific meaning to both their autobiographies and the very act of contextualization. In doing so, Hicks provides her individual subjects with more of a universality, a way to posit that narrative need not be insular and without academic merit. The research question, as stated by Hicks, is “what was it like to grow up as a girl in contemporary working-poor America?” (p. 172). Thus, her focus on the economic and structural context of her subjects is vital to the larger underpinnings of her research, for which horror novels become merely a vehicle and not the point, in themselves.

The third modality in which we see the autobiographical context at play is, of course, in the narratives of the girls themselves. Hicks uses bell hooks (1994), Myles Horton (1990) and Paulo Freire (1970) as a framework, all three of whom centered both their pedagogies and their scholarship within a context of dialogue so the human aspect of each of the girls’ experiences is vital to the analysis that Hicks is attempting to construct. We learn about these girls through our understanding of their community and through their understandings of and interactions with the books that Hicks posits as “subversive” texts (p. 174). As Hicks describes their reactions to the texts, their previous experience with different genres and the choices that they make, we are able to understand the girls both as individuals, and within their larger contexts.

In Inquiry and Reflection, Diane Dubose Brunner (1994) talks about representations of student experience in various forms of media (pp. 153-186), a topic that is also tackled quite often by both bell hooks and Henry Giroux. By investigating how these girls read different texts, Hicks provides us a new reading of the girls themselves. Brunner talks about the way in which language has been used to describe students, especially along class lines, in television, film and literature, as well as the ways in which students, themselves, have been depicted as using (or conversely, failing to use) language. Hicks’ framing of her larger point of inquiry, the ways in which language and linguistic practices are both reflective and constructive of their material and cultural lives is an investigation into the very way that fictional depictions of youth in educational spaces disembodies them from their contexts, a process described by Brunner (1994). By focusing on the autobiography and narrative experience of herself, her students, and their teacher, Hicks is able to re-contextualize these experiences.

Historical Context

Moving through the five contexts of critical inquiry, we arrive at the historical context. Cooper and White (2012) open their discussion of the historical context with the African proverb, “Until the lion has his own historian, the hunter will always be the hero” (p. 52). This proverb is central to the ideas of a critical, historical analysis. Without questioning, “Whose history is it?” we are unable to look critically at the stories that we have taken as truth (p. 52). Denzin and Lincoln (2005) do just this by going through what they depict as the eight moments of qualitative research. They move from the traditional, through modernist, blurred genres, crisis of representation, and finally, the triple crisis. As they move through these moments, we see the history of qualitative research in varying complexities itself, as it is opened to new voices, new ways of knowing, seeing and understanding.

There are, of course, numerous scholars who aim to illustrate both a critical and historical understanding of their subjects. One such scholar, whose work seems of particular relevance to Hicks’ content and analysis, is David Roediger (1993). By developing a history of American racial construction through the paradigm of whiteness, Roediger takes both a critical and historical look at the ways in which our understanding of self, power, poverty and privilege are informed by the history of racial construction, as well as the history of labour in the United States. As Hicks discusses the working poor character of the town that her work is centered in, Roediger’s (1993) analysis of how labour history and the history of slavery becomes particularly critical to our understandings of the intersections of whiteness and working class identities, as posited by Hicks (2005).

Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995, 1999) also captures a historical context in her analyses of education and race, uniting the contexts of critical race theory and critical pedagogy. By tracing notions of racial segregation and looking at cultural deprivation, Ladson-Billings is able to reclaim the ways that we look at modern schooling and the ways that we talk about racial disparities in education. In so doing, the historical perspective in critical inquiry acts as a counter-argument to sometimes dangerous modes of thinking, such as the “deficit” model of education. Hicks continues this tradition by highlighting the voices of subjects schooled within a working class context, as well as by demonstrating positive examples of engaged learning.

Many of Hicks’ methodological and writing strategies demonstrate a strong connection to the historical context. Firstly, she contextualizes the geographic location based on historical understanding. She discusses its physical make-up, position within the larger urban space and, also, demographic profiles within a historical context. The critical inquiry piece here is that neighborhoods do not simply arise, just as residents are not divorced from their space—neighborhoods themselves do not exist separately from the forces that construct them (Hicks, 2005). She specifically mentions factors such as factory closings that occurred long before her students were born, largely as a means to highlight the ways in which communities live under the economic shadows of what came before. It is clear within a historical context that events do not just happen and dissipate; they continue to have an effect on what comes after them.

Hicks is also able to engage with the historical context by extending her study over a year-long period (She even goes so far as to refer to her data as a “history” (p. 173)). By looking at the girls over a period of time, she engages with notions of change. The other way in which she engages with the historical context is by situating her methodology and theoretical framework within a trajectory of study, wherein she cites the work of Gee (2004) and other practitioners of new literacy studies. In so doing, she draws a historical lens over her specific research, as well as engaging in a larger theoretical conversation.

Political Context

Within critical theory, it is impossible to create barriers between the political, postmodern, and philosophical contexts. Like the postmodern world we live in, they are liquid, and flow into each other at different times of the research and inquiry process. First and foremost, we currently live in the postmodern era and, thus, all contemporary research is firmly rooted within that particular framework. Secondly, if, as Pinar (1978) claims, all intellectual acts are inherently political, then any act of research by an individual or institution is, of course, political as well. Finally, thoughtful considerations of philosophy hold these concepts together and, through the philosophical context, dialogue and discourse are created to enable change. Nonetheless, the political aspect of critical theory is interwoven into all four contexts and must always be present in any research that aims to be called “critical.”

The Frankfurt School, notably Max Horkheimer, is central in exploring the political context of critical theory. Horkheimer (1972) states in his pivotal work, Critical Theory , that there cannot be many defined criteria for critical theory, as it is a product of its political, social, cultural, and economic contexts and is, thus, continually changing; however, he argues that critical theory must always contain the unfaltering “concern for the abolition of social injustice” (p. 242), a sentiment echoed by scholars such as Giroux (2004) and Lather (1986).

Lather (1986), in particular, argues that researchers should employ critical theory in order to avoid the “rape model” of research—namely, objectifying and “othering” one’s research subject. Critical theory can help researchers and institutions build and maintain “a more collaborative approach...to empower the researched, to build emancipatory theory, and to move toward the establishment of data credibility within praxis-oriented, advocacy research” (Lather, 1986, p. 272). Essentially, the goal of critical theory should be to encourage and facilitate emancipatory change for the oppressed, marginalized and misunderstood. For example, in her article, Hicks investigates—and eventually advocates for—the typically “hidden face of poverty” or the hidden “white” face of poverty. Intrigued and surprised by the “predominant Whiteness of the neighbourhood” (p. 171), where she situates her research, Hicks draws attention to an often overlooked area in urban poverty research.

The change called for in critical inquiry can be demonstrated through the realization of agency, which is central to the political context, and to critical inquiry as well: “the political contexts at work within society impact upon one’s sense of agency” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 72). In Hicks’ article, her goal (though flawed by her own middle-class biases and preconceptions of the working-poor) was to investigate the experience of girlhood in working-poor America, and how the school language practices—mainly reading novels—were “layered within their cultural and material lives” (p. 172). Though her research began with a more observational rather than advocacy focus, Hicks accomplished the praxis-oriented research that is often advocated by Lather (1986) and other critical researchers and theorists. When one student, Brandy, voiced her newfound confidence and proclaimed that “We can start to control this [their situation] by just sitting down and talking” (p. 184), she demonstrated that she had begun to realize her agency—the first step towards the change that critical theory champions.

The students in Hicks’ research also struggled with “juggling the tension and ambiguity of their class differences in a middle-class school culture” (p. 173). This is clearly evident in Hicks’ demonstration of her own middle-class cultural capital, when she attempts to begin the course with a text that the girls simply did not relate to, involving a cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1985) that rested outside of their realm of experience. Instead, the girls chose to focus on a type of text that was familiar to them: horror paperbacks. This shift in the types of literature that the students gravitated towards raises some critical questions: Are students in working-poor, urban neighbourhoods only capable of consuming simple, seemingly “low brow” texts? Should educators push those students beyond their comfortable reading environment into something more literary?

It is here that the true task of critical inquiry begins to take shape: “Literary” for whom, exactly? Why are these texts considered to be “low brow?” Why do we feel the need to teach certain accepted texts within the English classroom? While not specifically stating that these questions entered her research, Hicks displays in her article her engagement with these issues, as she questions her own cultural capital and decides to investigate, instead, the possibilities that lay within the horror paperbacks for unveiling the layered meanings of her students’ identities.

By taking this critical approach, Hicks’ grounds herself in the realm of critical pedagogy for political and social change—after reflecting on and altering her preconceptions of the cultural awareness and capital of her students, she provided them with a forum to be heard and to express their own cultural hauntings. Bauman (1997) claims that “the key to a problem as large as social justice lies in a problem as (ostensibly) small-scale as the primal moral act of taking up responsibility for the other nearby” (p. 70)—while Hicks may not have solved the issue of social justice, her research and willingness to speak and listen to these young girls illustrates her commitment to this group in working-poor America.

Postmodern Context

Critical theory argues that, in our postmodern society, normative assumptions and dominant perspectives of politics, culture and society often remain unquestioned. Horkheimer (1972) proposes that we re-evaluate our interactions and place within society a renewed consciousness that is “dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life” (pp. 198-199). Of course, the critical researcher must question and define what is meant by “reasonable conditions of life;” the researcher must also focus on how that is attainable for each individual. For many theorists, the key lies in the search for individual and collective agency. For example, once the young girls in Hicks’ class developed and discovered their personal stories and voices, they were able to create a larger, collaborative agency that, potentially, could be heard outside of their small, working-poor neighbourhood classroom.

Central to the postmodern context is the move from a producer to a consumer society, and the power dynamics that occur as a result—a concept encountered by many critical theorists and researchers. Foucault (1982) claims that, for society to progress to a more equitable and open society, we are in desperate need of a “new economy of power relations” (p. 779). However, as Giroux (2004) notes, it is important to remember that, within our capitalist, postmodern society, power does not disappear but, rather, becomes reworked, replayed and restaged; perhaps that reworking of power can result from the turn from consumer to producer.

Bauman also voices his concern for our movement from a producer society to a consumer society and notes that, “if unchecked, [it] will spell dire consequences for humanity” (quoted in Cooper & White, 2012, p. 86). He further explains that the concept of choice, and the deceptively simple ability to choose, is yet another crucial component of our postmodern condition, rooted in the dichotomy of producer and consumer. Surrounded by menial daily choices of what espresso drink to purchase, television program to fit into our schedule or Twitter account to follow, it is clear that our postmodern society values choice. Bauman would argue, however, that these are quick, meaningless choices that require little to no responsibility once the choice has been made, but it is these choices that create and shape our identities, only to be “adopted and discarded like a change of costume” (1997, p. 88).

In Hicks’ article, her students began as consumers. They were drawn to the paperback horrors because of their distribution and saturation within the media, from television programs such as Goosebumps , as well as other film interpretations of the genre. However, once they began creating the same horror texts that they originally consumed and became producers, they found their voices and became individuals with their own sense of agency and the awareness of their autobiographical situation within their postmodern, political world.

Even so, Hicks’ students do not have the same choices as many of their middle-class counterparts. Our consumer-driven society emphasizes the constant need for choice, yet so many fail to have the privilege of choice. Indeed, the word “fail” might seem insensitive and severe but, in a consumer-driven society, members of the working-poor have neither the ability nor the means to choose and participate in material culture. In her article, Hicks observes that her students fail to meet the material standards of the dominant, middle-class culture and, therefore, their ability to live within the consumer, postmodern world is gone; there are no jobs left in their area and, so, the “material possibilities” have disappeared for the youth in this working-poor neighbourhood (p. 170). In addition to their attempted participation in the middle-class consumer culture, the young girls also continuously struggle with “juggling the tension and ambiguity of their class differences in a middle-class school culture” (p. 173). If material possibilities are valued in identity construction in a postmodern consumer society, then the students’ inability to obtain them means a negation of individuality and agency and, thus, the potential for collective action and change.

Philosophical Context

The girls in Hicks’ summer school reading group may have juggled tensions and struggled with expression, but they certainly took matters into their own hands when they decided to circulate horror paperbacks amongst themselves. Hicks’ article illustrates a difference between education and schooling, and these young girls in working-poor America used the horror paperbacks as a means of creating their own form of education. Postmodern critical philosopher Maxine Greene (1988) notes the philosophical differences between schooling and education, and argues that “Education...encourages individuals to grow and to become, while schooling constrains students to become servants of a technocratic society” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 106). This is particularly crucial to coming to an understanding of the dynamic nature of critical theory and, thus, critical pedagogy. Schooling, in Hicks’ situation, relied on a middle-class cultural capital that was not in the same sphere of experience as the education that the girls created for themselves, based on their interests and understandings. They began reading these texts as a self-created peer reading group and it was from this form of education, on the periphery of a middle-class school culture and environment, that the educator, Hicks, noticed the potential in exploring (and further complicating) the layered meanings of the girls’ identities.

Greene (1988) also states that imagination is central to developing one’s particular perspective and realizing one’s individual agency.

It takes imagination to become aware that a search is possible, and there are analogies here to the kind of learning we want to stimulate...it takes imagination on the part of the young people to perceive openings through which they can move. (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 110)

Greene’s (1988) emphasis on imagination paving the path to freedom is central to understanding the philosophical context of critical inquiry and also the philosophical context of Hick’s research. During a discussion of The Wizard of Oz, Hicks asked her students if, given the choice, they would choose to stay in Oz or go back to Kansas. One student, Shannon, imagines her escape from her current situation in a heartbreaking revelation:

I would choose Oz because it’s a beautiful land and up there you don’t hear no gunshots. And you don’t walk on glass and don’t hear people hollering and screaming at you like you do here. (Hicks, 2005, p. 183)

Shannon might not have made a plan of action for escaping her reality, but her imagination in this one instance displays her awareness of her political, social and economic situation, and her desire to escape. Picturing a better place—even one that is imaginary—could have been Shannon’s first step into plucking herself from her reality and escaping into a new one of change and autonomy (Greene, 1988).

Critics often blame critical inquiry for its emphasis on the language of critique, rather than the language of possibility. For example, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) expresses her doubt in critical inquiry’s empowering and transformative powers. She argues that “the discourse of critical pedagogy is based on rationalist assumptions that give rise to repressive myths,” and critical pedagogues “perpetuate relations of domination in their classrooms” (p. 297). Like Ellsworth, Viviane Robinson (1992) argues that there is a paradox at the heart of critical inquiry’s endeavours for emancipation. When critical researchers offer alternative understandings of subjects’ situations, their offer has two “arrogant” claims:

a) subjects’ (mis)understandings are at least in part responsible for the situation they find unacceptable; and (b) the alternative understandings offered by the critical social scientist, if acted on, would result in outcomes that are more effective and fulfilling than those currently experienced. (p. 346)

Nonetheless, critical inquiry is, by its nature, self-critical, and critical theorists assert that, while these may be potential issues, true critical inquiry inherently addresses these problems. Rather than criticizing the nature of critical inquiry, Canella and Lincoln (2009) identify three issues that may marginalize and disempower critical inquiry, thus impacting its reception amongst academic and general populations. First, a high level of abstraction and use of difficult language keep the work of critical inquiry away from broader audiences. Second, political forces often attack diversity and discredit critique. Finally, the rise of neoliberalism and hyper-capitalism suppress critical inquiry and privileges evidence-based, positivistic research.

In this article, we have used the five contexts for qualitative research (Cooper & White, 2012) to understand the possibilities for empowerment in critical educational research. In our analysis, Hicks’ (2005) article has provided examples of how teachers can adopt responsive and dialogic pedagogies that “start with close readings of students’ lives and voices” (p. 188). Through her constant reflective, self-critical, and participatory methodology, Hicks avoids the potential pitfalls of critical inquiry and, instead, epitomizes the language of possibility in critical inquiry. Thus, the five contexts of Cooper and White (2012) exemplified through Hicks (2005) illustrate the emancipatory potentials of critical educational research by engaging “the researched in a democratized process of inquiry characterized by negotiation, reciprocity, [and] empowerment” (Lather, 1986, p. 257).

Anzaldua, G. E. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new Mestiza  4th ed., San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books .

Bauman, Z. (1997). Postmodernity and its discontents . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Bauman, Z. (2005). Work, consumerism and the new poor . Maidenhead, England: Open University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1985). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood.

Brunner, D. D. (1994).  Inquiry and reflection: Framing narrative practice in education . Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Cannella, G. S., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2009). Deploying qualitative methods for critical social purposes. In N. K. Denzin & M. D. Giardina (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry and social justice (pp. 53-72). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Cooper, K. & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the post-modern era: Contexts of qualitative research . New York: Springer.

Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research, 3 rd Ed. (pp. 1-32). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59 (3), 297-324.

Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8 (4), 777-795.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed . New York: Seabury Press.

Gee. J. P. (2004).  Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling . London: Routledge.

Giroux, H. (1988). Critical theory amid the politics of culture and voice: Rethinking the discourse of educational research. In R. Sherman & R. Webb (Eds.), Qualitative research in education: Focus and methods (pp. 190–210). New York: Palmer.

Giroux, H. A. (2000). Postmodern education and disposable youth. In P. P. Trifonas (Ed.), Revolutionary pedagogies: Cultural politics, instituting education, and the discourse of theory (pp. 174-195). New York: Routledge.

Giroux, H. A. (2004). Critical pedagogy and the postmodern/modern divide: Towards a pedagogy of democratization. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31 (1), 31-47.

Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom . New York: Teachers College Press.

Hicks, D. (2005). Cultural hauntings: Girlhood fictions from working-poor America. Qualitative Inquiry, 11 (2), 170-190.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

Horkheimer, M. (1972). Critical theory . Toronto: Herder and Herder.

Horton, M. & Freire, P. (1990). We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change. (Edited by B. Bell, J. Gaventa & J. Peters). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Kincheloe, J. L., & McLaren, P. (2005). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (pp. 279–313). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Kincheloe, J. L., & McLaren, P. (2011). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In K. Hayes et al., (Eds.), Key work in critical pedagogy: Joe L. Kincheloe (pp. 285-326). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34 (3), 159-165.

Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1999). Preparing teachers for diverse student populations: A critical race theory perspective. Review of Research in Education, 24 , 211-247.

Lather, P. (1986). Research as praxis. Harvard Educational Review, 56 (3), 257-277.

Pinar, W. F. (1975). Currere: toward reconceptualization. Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists , 396-414.

Pinar, W. F. (1978). The reconceptualization of curriculum studies. In D. J. Flinders and S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (pp. 149-157). New York: Routledge Falmer.

Robinson, V. M. J. (1992). Doing critical social science: dilemmas of control. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 5 (4), 345-359.

Roediger, D. (1993). Race and the working-class past in the United States: Multiple identities and the future of labor history. International Review of Social History, 38 , 127-143.

Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Tatum, B. D. (1997). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the. cafeteria?” And other conversations about race. New York: Basic Books.

Tripp, D. (1992). Critical theory and educational research. Issues in Educational Research , 2(1), 13-23.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

White, R.E., Cooper, K. (2022). An Introduction to Critical Approaches. In: Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_2

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_2

Published : 29 September 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-85126-2

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-85124-8

eBook Packages : Education Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Privacy Policy

Home » Critical Analysis – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Critical Analysis – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Critical Analysis

Definition:

Critical analysis is a process of examining a piece of work or an idea in a systematic, objective, and analytical way. It involves breaking down complex ideas, concepts, or arguments into smaller, more manageable parts to understand them better.

Types of Critical Analysis

Types of Critical Analysis are as follows:

Literary Analysis

This type of analysis focuses on analyzing and interpreting works of literature , such as novels, poetry, plays, etc. The analysis involves examining the literary devices used in the work, such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphor, and how they contribute to the overall meaning of the work.

Film Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting films, including their themes, cinematography, editing, and sound. Film analysis can also include evaluating the director’s style and how it contributes to the overall message of the film.

Art Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting works of art , such as paintings, sculptures, and installations. The analysis involves examining the elements of the artwork, such as color, composition, and technique, and how they contribute to the overall meaning of the work.

Cultural Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting cultural artifacts , such as advertisements, popular music, and social media posts. The analysis involves examining the cultural context of the artifact and how it reflects and shapes cultural values, beliefs, and norms.

Historical Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting historical documents , such as diaries, letters, and government records. The analysis involves examining the historical context of the document and how it reflects the social, political, and cultural attitudes of the time.

Philosophical Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting philosophical texts and ideas, such as the works of philosophers and their arguments. The analysis involves evaluating the logical consistency of the arguments and assessing the validity and soundness of the conclusions.

Scientific Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting scientific research studies and their findings. The analysis involves evaluating the methods used in the study, the data collected, and the conclusions drawn, and assessing their reliability and validity.

Critical Discourse Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting language use in social and political contexts. The analysis involves evaluating the power dynamics and social relationships conveyed through language use and how they shape discourse and social reality.

Comparative Analysis

This type of analysis involves examining and interpreting multiple texts or works of art and comparing them to each other. The analysis involves evaluating the similarities and differences between the texts and how they contribute to understanding the themes and meanings conveyed.

Critical Analysis Format

Critical Analysis Format is as follows:

I. Introduction

• Provide a brief overview of the text, object, or event being analyzed
• Explain the purpose of the analysis and its significance
• Provide background information on the context and relevant historical or cultural factors

II. Description

• Provide a detailed description of the text, object, or event being analyzed
• Identify key themes, ideas, and arguments presented
• Describe the author or creator’s style, tone, and use of language or visual elements

III. Analysis

• Analyze the text, object, or event using critical thinking skills
• Identify the main strengths and weaknesses of the argument or presentation
• Evaluate the reliability and validity of the evidence presented
• Assess any assumptions or biases that may be present in the text, object, or event
• Consider the implications of the argument or presentation for different audiences and contexts

IV. Evaluation

• Provide an overall evaluation of the text, object, or event based on the analysis
• Assess the effectiveness of the argument or presentation in achieving its intended purpose
• Identify any limitations or gaps in the argument or presentation
• Consider any alternative viewpoints or interpretations that could be presented
• Summarize the main points of the analysis and evaluation
• Reiterate the significance of the text, object, or event and its relevance to broader issues or debates
• Provide any recommendations for further research or future developments in the field.

VI. Example

• Provide an example or two to support your analysis and evaluation
• Use quotes or specific details from the text, object, or event to support your claims
• Analyze the example(s) using critical thinking skills and explain how they relate to your overall argument

VII. Conclusion

• Reiterate your thesis statement and summarize your main points
• Provide a final evaluation of the text, object, or event based on your analysis
• Offer recommendations for future research or further developments in the field
• End with a thought-provoking statement or question that encourages the reader to think more deeply about the topic

How to Write Critical Analysis

Writing a critical analysis involves evaluating and interpreting a text, such as a book, article, or film, and expressing your opinion about its quality and significance. Here are some steps you can follow to write a critical analysis:

• Read and re-read the text: Before you begin writing, make sure you have a good understanding of the text. Read it several times and take notes on the key points, themes, and arguments.
• Identify the author’s purpose and audience: Consider why the author wrote the text and who the intended audience is. This can help you evaluate whether the author achieved their goals and whether the text is effective in reaching its audience.
• Analyze the structure and style: Look at the organization of the text and the author’s writing style. Consider how these elements contribute to the overall meaning of the text.
• Evaluate the content : Analyze the author’s arguments, evidence, and conclusions. Consider whether they are logical, convincing, and supported by the evidence presented in the text.
• Consider the context: Think about the historical, cultural, and social context in which the text was written. This can help you understand the author’s perspective and the significance of the text.
• Develop your thesis statement : Based on your analysis, develop a clear and concise thesis statement that summarizes your overall evaluation of the text.
• Support your thesis: Use evidence from the text to support your thesis statement. This can include direct quotes, paraphrases, and examples from the text.
• Write the introduction, body, and conclusion : Organize your analysis into an introduction that provides context and presents your thesis, a body that presents your evidence and analysis, and a conclusion that summarizes your main points and restates your thesis.
• Revise and edit: After you have written your analysis, revise and edit it to ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and well-organized. Check for spelling and grammar errors, and make sure that your analysis is logically sound and supported by evidence.

When to Write Critical Analysis

You may want to write a critical analysis in the following situations:

• Academic Assignments: If you are a student, you may be assigned to write a critical analysis as a part of your coursework. This could include analyzing a piece of literature, a historical event, or a scientific paper.
• Journalism and Media: As a journalist or media person, you may need to write a critical analysis of current events, political speeches, or media coverage.
• Personal Interest: If you are interested in a particular topic, you may want to write a critical analysis to gain a deeper understanding of it. For example, you may want to analyze the themes and motifs in a novel or film that you enjoyed.
• Professional Development : Professionals such as writers, scholars, and researchers often write critical analyses to gain insights into their field of study or work.

Critical Analysis Example

An Example of Critical Analysis Could be as follow:

Research Topic:

The Impact of Online Learning on Student Performance

Introduction:

The introduction of the research topic is clear and provides an overview of the issue. However, it could benefit from providing more background information on the prevalence of online learning and its potential impact on student performance.

Literature Review:

The literature review is comprehensive and well-structured. It covers a broad range of studies that have examined the relationship between online learning and student performance. However, it could benefit from including more recent studies and providing a more critical analysis of the existing literature.

Research Methods:

The research methods are clearly described and appropriate for the research question. The study uses a quasi-experimental design to compare the performance of students who took an online course with those who took the same course in a traditional classroom setting. However, the study may benefit from using a randomized controlled trial design to reduce potential confounding factors.

The results are presented in a clear and concise manner. The study finds that students who took the online course performed similarly to those who took the traditional course. However, the study only measures performance on one course and may not be generalizable to other courses or contexts.

Discussion :

The discussion section provides a thorough analysis of the study’s findings. The authors acknowledge the limitations of the study and provide suggestions for future research. However, they could benefit from discussing potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between online learning and student performance.

Conclusion :

The conclusion summarizes the main findings of the study and provides some implications for future research and practice. However, it could benefit from providing more specific recommendations for implementing online learning programs in educational settings.

Purpose of Critical Analysis

There are several purposes of critical analysis, including:

• To identify and evaluate arguments : Critical analysis helps to identify the main arguments in a piece of writing or speech and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. This enables the reader to form their own opinion and make informed decisions.
• To assess evidence : Critical analysis involves examining the evidence presented in a text or speech and evaluating its quality and relevance to the argument. This helps to determine the credibility of the claims being made.
• To recognize biases and assumptions : Critical analysis helps to identify any biases or assumptions that may be present in the argument, and evaluate how these affect the credibility of the argument.
• To develop critical thinking skills: Critical analysis helps to develop the ability to think critically, evaluate information objectively, and make reasoned judgments based on evidence.
• To improve communication skills: Critical analysis involves carefully reading and listening to information, evaluating it, and expressing one’s own opinion in a clear and concise manner. This helps to improve communication skills and the ability to express ideas effectively.

Importance of Critical Analysis

Here are some specific reasons why critical analysis is important:

• Helps to identify biases: Critical analysis helps individuals to recognize their own biases and assumptions, as well as the biases of others. By being aware of biases, individuals can better evaluate the credibility and reliability of information.
• Enhances problem-solving skills : Critical analysis encourages individuals to question assumptions and consider multiple perspectives, which can lead to creative problem-solving and innovation.
• Promotes better decision-making: By carefully evaluating evidence and arguments, critical analysis can help individuals make more informed and effective decisions.
• Facilitates understanding: Critical analysis helps individuals to understand complex issues and ideas by breaking them down into smaller parts and evaluating them separately.
• Fosters intellectual growth : Engaging in critical analysis challenges individuals to think deeply and critically, which can lead to intellectual growth and development.

Advantages of Critical Analysis

Some advantages of critical analysis include:

• Improved decision-making: Critical analysis helps individuals make informed decisions by evaluating all available information and considering various perspectives.
• Enhanced problem-solving skills : Critical analysis requires individuals to identify and analyze the root cause of a problem, which can help develop effective solutions.
• Increased creativity : Critical analysis encourages individuals to think outside the box and consider alternative solutions to problems, which can lead to more creative and innovative ideas.
• Improved communication : Critical analysis helps individuals communicate their ideas and opinions more effectively by providing logical and coherent arguments.
• Reduced bias: Critical analysis requires individuals to evaluate information objectively, which can help reduce personal biases and subjective opinions.
• Better understanding of complex issues : Critical analysis helps individuals to understand complex issues by breaking them down into smaller parts, examining each part and understanding how they fit together.
• Greater self-awareness: Critical analysis helps individuals to recognize their own biases, assumptions, and limitations, which can lead to personal growth and development.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

You may also like

Tables in Research Paper – Types, Creating Guide...

Research Paper Conclusion – Writing Guide and...

Research Questions – Types, Examples and Writing...

MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) –...

Framework Analysis – Method, Types and Examples

Purpose of Research – Objectives and Applications

GEOG 410 - Research Methodology

• Verifying If An Article Is Peer-Reviewed
• Should I Trust Internet Sources?
• Suggested Databases for Finding Sources
• Critical Analysis
• Creating an Annotated Bibliography
• Creating a Literature Review
• Resources for Writing Research Proposals
• Off-Campus Access

Introduction

Critical analysis may or may not be a component of this particular course's evaluation, but it is an important component of any research process. 

Inquiry-based learning

Critical thinking is at the heart of scientific inquiry. A good scientist is one who never stops asking why things happen, or how things happen. Science makes progress when we find data that contradicts our current scientific ideas.

Scientific inquiry includes three key areas:

         1.  Identifying a problem and asking questions about that problem          2.  Selecting information to respond to the problem and evaluating it          3.  Drawing conclusions from the evidence

Hart, T. (2018, 18 October) Teaching critical thinking in science - the key to students' future success.  Brighter Thinking Blog . https://www.cambridge.org/us/education/blog/2018/10/18/teaching-critical-thinking-science-key-students-future-success/

• Writing Critical Analysis Papers

Links and tips on how to conduct a critical analysis

• Critical Thinking & the Scientific Method "Critical thinking involves constantly asking questions, examining information and evidence, and figuring out conclusions. All of these actions are the basis for the scientific method, which then gives good evidence on which to base conclusions."
• How to Write a Critical Analysis (with examples and tips) "Critical analysis is the detailed examination and evaluation of another person's ideas or work. It is subjective writing as it expresses your interpretation and analysis of the work by breaking down and studying its parts... Good critical analysis evaluates the ideas or work in a balanced way that highlights its positive and negative qualities."
• CQ Researcher Online This link opens in a new window Addresses controversial topics in a balanced, unbiased manner, with regular reports on topics in health, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the U.S. economy.

• << Previous: I Found All These Sources. Now What?!?
• Next: Creating an Annotated Bibliography >>
• Last Updated: Nov 6, 2023 1:03 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.unk.edu/geography_410
• University of Nebraska Kearney
• Library Policies
• Accessibility
• Research Guides
• Citation Guides
• A to Z Databases
• Open Nebraska
• Interlibrary Loan

2508 11th Avenue, Kearney, NE 68849-2240

Circulation Desk:  308-865-8599 Main Office:  308-865-8535

  Ask A Librarian

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• Ethnic Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Politics of Development
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

A newer edition of this book is available.

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

18 Content Analysis

Lindsay Prior, School of Sociology, Social Policy, and Social Work, Queen's University

• Published: 04 August 2014
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

In this chapter, the focus is on ways in which content analysis can be used to investigate and describe interview and textual data. The chapter opens with a contextualization of the method and then proceeds to an examination of the role of content analysis in relation to both quantitative and qualitative modes of social research. Following the introductory sections, four kinds of data are subjected to content analysis. These include data derived from a sample of qualitative interviews (N = 54), textual data derived from a sample of health policy documents (N = 6), data derived from a single interview relating to a “case” of traumatic brain injury, and data gathered from 54 abstracts of academic papers on the topic of “well-being.” Using a distinctive and somewhat novel style of content analysis that calls upon the notion of semantic networks, the chapter shows how the method can be used either independently or in conjunction with other forms of inquiry (including various styles of discourse analysis) to analyze data, and also how it can be used to verify and underpin claims that arise out of analysis. The chapter ends with an overview of the different ways in which the study of “content”—especially the study of document content—can be positioned in social scientific research projects.

What is Content Analysis?

In his 1952 text on the subject of content analysis, Bernard Berelson traces the origins of the method to communication research and then lists what he calls six distinguishing features of the approach. As one might expect, the six defining features reflect the concerns of social science as taught in the 1950s, an age in which the calls for an “objective,” “systematic,” and “quantitative” approach to the study of communication data were first heard. The reference to the field of “communication” was of course nothing less than a reflection of a substantive social scientific interest over the previous decades in what was called public opinion, and specifically attempts to understand why and how a potential of source of critical, rational judgement on political leaders (i.e., the views of the public) could be turned into something to be manipulated by dictators and demagogues. In such a context, it is perhaps not so surprising that in one of the more popular research methods texts of the decade, the terms content analysis and communication analysis are used interchangeably (see Goode & Hatt, 1952 :325).

Academic fashions and interests naturally change with available technology, and these days we are more likely to focus on the individualization of communications through Twitter and the like, rather than of mass newspaper readership or mass radio audiences, yet the prevailing discourse on content analysis has remained much the same as it was in Berleson’s day. Thus Neuendorf (2002 :1), for example, continues to define content analysis as “the systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characteristics.” Clearly the centrality of communication as a basis for understanding and using content analysis continues to hold, but in this article I will try to show that, rather than locate the use of content analysis in disembodied “messages” and distantiated “media,” we would do better to focus on the fact that communication is a building block of social life itself and not merely a system of messages that are transmitted—in whatever form—from sender to receiver. To put that statement in another guise, we need to note that communicative action (to use the phraseology of Habermas, 1987 ) rests at the very base of the lifeworld, and one very important way of coming to grips with that world is to study the content of what people say and write in the course of their everyday lives.

My aim is to demonstrate various ways in which content analysis (henceforth CTA) can be used and developed to analyze social scientific data as derived from interviews and documents. It is not my intention to cover the history of CTA or to venture into forms of literary analysis or to demonstrate each and every technique that has ever been deployed by content analysts. (Many of the standard textbooks deal with those kinds of issues much more fully than is possible here. See, for example, Babbie, 2013 ; Berelson, 1952 ; Bryman, 2008 , Krippendorf, 2004 ; Neuendorf, 2002 ; and Weber, 1990 ). Instead I seek to recontextualize the use of the method in a framework of network thinking and to link the use of CTA to specific problems of data analysis. As will become evident, my exposition of the method is grounded in real world problems. Those problems are drawn from my own research projects and tend to reflect my particular academic interests—which are almost entirely related to the analysis of the ways in which people talk and write about aspects of health, illness, and disease. However, lest the reader be deterred from going any further, I should emphasise that the substantive issues that I elect to examine are secondary if not tertiary to my main objective—which is to demonstrate how CTA can be integrated into a range of research designs and add depth and rigour to the analysis of interview and inscription data. To that end, in the next section I aim to clear our path to analysis by dealing with some issues that touch on the general position of CTA in the research armory, and especially its location in the schism that has developed between quantitative and qualitative modes of inquiry.

The Methodological Context of Content Analysis

Content analysis is usually associated with the study of inscription contained in published reports, newspapers, adverts, books, web pages, journals, and other forms of documentation. Hence, nearly all of Berelson’s (1952) illustrations and references to the method relate to the analysis of written records of some kind, and where speech is mentioned it is almost always in the form of broadcast and published political speeches (such as State of the Union addresses). This association of content analysis with text and documentation is further underlined in modern textbook discussions of the method. Thus Bryman (2008) for example, defines content analysis as “an approach to the analysis of documents and texts , that seek to quantify content in terms of pre-determined categories” (2008:274, emphasis in original), while Babbie (2013) states that content analysis is “the study of recorded human communications” (2013:295), and Weber refers to it as a method to make “valid inferences from text” (1990:9). It is clear then that CTA is viewed as a text-based method of analysis, though extensions of the method to other forms of inscriptional material are also referred to in some discussions. Thus Neuendorf (2002) , for example, rightly refers to analyses of film and television images as legitimate fields for the deployment of CTA, and by implication analyses of still—as well as moving—images such as photographs and billboard adverts. Oddly, in the traditional or standard paradigm of content analysis, the method is solely used to capture the “message” of a text or speech; it is not used for the analysis of a recipient’s response to or understanding of the message (which is normally accessed via interview data and analyzed in other and often less rigorous ways; see, e.g., Merton, 1968 ). So in this article I suggest that we can take things at least one small step further by using CTA to analyse speech (especially interview data) as well as text.

Standard textbook discussions of CTA usually refer to it as a “non-reactive” or “unobtrusive” method of investigation (see, e.g., Babbie, 2013 :294), and a large part of the reason for that designation is due to its focus on already existing text (i.e., text gathered without intrusion into a research setting). More importantly, however, (and to underline the obvious) CTA is primarily a method of analysis rather than of data collection. Its use therefore has to be integrated into wider frames of research design that embrace systematic forms of data collection as well as forms of data analysis. Thus routine strategies for sampling data are often required in designs that call upon CTA as a method of analysis. These latter can either be built around random sampling methods, or even techniques of “theoretical sampling” ( Glaser & Strauss, 1967 ) so as to identify as suitable range of materials for content analysis. CTA can also be linked to styles of ethnographic inquiry and to the use of various purposive or non-random sampling techniques. For an example, see Altheide (1987) .

Of course, the use of CTA in a research design does not preclude the use of other forms of analysis in the same study, for it is a technique that can be deployed in parallel with other methods or with other methods sequentially. For example, and as I will demonstrate in the following sections, one might use CTA as a preliminary analytical strategy to get a grip on the available data before moving into specific forms of discourse analysis. In this respect it can be as well to think of using CTA in, say, the frame of a priority/sequence model of research design as described by Morgan (1998) .

As I shall explain, there is a sense in which content analysis rests at the base of all forms of qualitative data analysis, yet the paradox is that the analysis of content is usually considered to be a quantitative (numerically based) method. In terms of the qualitative/quantitative divide, however, it is probably best to think of CTA as a hybrid method, and some writers have in the past argued that it is necessarily so ( Kracauer, 1952 ). That was probably easier to do in an age when many recognised the strictly drawn boundaries between qualitative and quantitative styles of research to be inappropriate. Thus in their widely used text on “ Methods in Social Research ,” Goode and Hatt (1952 :313), for example, asserted that, “[M]odern research must reject as a false dichotomy the separation between ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ studies, or between the ‘statistical’ and the ‘non-statistical’ approach.” It was a position advanced on the grounds that all good research must meet adequate standards of validity and reliability whatever its style, and it is a message well worth preserving. However, there is a more fundamental reason why it is nonsensical to draw a division between the qualitative and the quantitative. It is simply this: all acts of social observation depend on the deployment of qualitative categories—whether gender, class, race, or even age; there is no descriptive category in use in the social sciences that connects to a world of “natural kinds.” In short, all categories are made, and therefore when we seek to count “things” in the world, we are dependent on the existence of socially constructed divisions. How the categories take the shape that they do—how definitions are arrived at, how inclusion and exclusion criteria are decided upon, and how taxonomic principles are deployed—constitute interesting research questions in themselves. From our starting point, however, we need only note that “sorting things out” (to use a phrase from Bowker & Star, 1999 ) and acts of “counting”—whether it be of chromosomes or people ( Martin and Lynch, 2009 )—are activities that connect to the social world of organized interaction rather than to unsullied observation of the external world.

Of course, some writers deny the strict division between the qualitative and quantitative on grounds of empirical practice rather than of ontological reasoning. For example, Bryman (2008) argues that qualitative researchers also call upon quantitative thinking but tend to use somewhat vague, imprecise terms rather than numbers and percentages—referring to frequencies via the use of phrases such as “more than” and “less then.” Kracauer (1952) advanced various arguments against the view that CTA was strictly a quantitative method, suggesting that very often we wished to assess content as being negative or positive with respect to some political, social, or economic thesis and that such evaluations could never be merely statistical. He further argued that we often wished to study “underlying” messages or latent content of documentation and that in consequence we needed to interpret content as well as count items of content. Morgan (1993) has argued that, given the emphasis that is placed on “coding” in almost all forms of qualitative data analysis, the deployment of counting techniques is essential and that we ought therefore to think in terms of what he calls qualitative as well as quantitative content analysis. Naturally, some of these positions create more problems than they seemingly solve (as is the case with considerations of “latent content”), but given the twentieth-first-century predilection for “mixed-methods” research ( Creswell, 2007 ), it is clear that CTA has a role to play in integrating quantitative and qualitative modes of analysis in a systematic rather than merely an ad hoc and piecemeal fashion. In the sections that follow, I will provide some examples of the ways in which “qualitative” analysis can be combined with systematic modes of counting. First, however, we need to focus on what is analyzed in CTA.

Units of analysis

So what is the unit of analysis in CTA? A brief answer to that question is that analysis can be focused on words, sentences, grammatical structures, tenses, clauses, ratios (of say, nouns to verbs), or even “themes.” Berelson (1952) gives some examples of all of the above and also recommends a form of thematic analysis (c.f., Braun and Clarke, 2006 ) as a viable option. Other possibilities include counting column length (of speeches and newspaper articles), amounts of (advertising) space, or frequency of images. For our purposes, however, it might be useful to consider a specific (and somewhat traditional) example. Here it is. It is an extract from what has turned out to be one of the most important political speeches of the current century.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.” —George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 29, 2002

A number of possibilities arise for analysing the content of a speech such as the one above. Clearly, words and sentences must play a part in any such analysis, but in addition to words there are structural features of the speech that could also figure. For example, the extract takes the form of a simple narrative—pointing to a past, a present, and an ominous future (catastrophe)—and could therefore be analysed as such. There are, in addition, a number of interesting oppositions in the speech (such as those between “regimes” and the “civilised” world), as well as a set of interconnected present participles such as “plotting,” “hiding,” “arming,” and “threatening” that are associated both with Iraq and with other states that “constitute an axis of evil.” Evidently, simple word counts would fail to capture the intricacies of a speech of this kind. Indeed, our example serves another purpose—to highlight the difficulty that often arises in dissociating content analysis from discourse analysis (of which narrative analysis and the analysis of rhetoric and trope are subspecies). So how might we deal with these problems?

One approach that can be adopted is to focus on what is referenced in text and speech. That is, to concentrate on the characters or elements that are recruited into the text and to examine the ways in which they are connected or co-associated. I shall provide some examples of this form of analysis shortly. Let us merely note for the time being that in the previous example we have a speech in which various “characters”—including weapons in general, specific weapons (such as nerve gas), threats, plots, hatred, evil and mass destruction—play a role. Be aware that we need not be concerned with the veracity of what is being said—whether it is true or false—but simply with what is in the speech and how what is in there is associated. (We may leave the task of assessing truth and falsity to the jurists). Be equally aware that it is a text that is before us and not an insight into the ex-President’s mind, nor his thinking, nor his beliefs, nor any other subjective property that he may have possessed.

In the introductory paragraph, I made brief reference to some ideas of the German philosopher Jűrgen Habermas (1987) . It is not my intention here to expand on the detailed twists and turns of his claims with respect to the role of language in the “lifeworld” at this point. However, I do intend to borrow what I regard as some particularly useful ideas from his work. The first, is his claim—influenced by a strong line of twentieth-century philosophical thinking—that language and culture are constitutive of the lifeworld (1987:125), and in that sense we might say that things (including individuals and societies) are made in language. That of course is a simple justification for focusing on what people say rather than what they “think” or “believe” or “feel” or “mean” (all of which have been suggested at one time or another as points of focus for social inquiry and especially qualitative forms of inquiry). Second, Habermas argues that speakers and therefore hearers (and one might add writers and therefore readers), in what he calls their speech acts, necessarily adopt a pragmatic relation to one of three worlds: entities in the objective world, things in the social world, and elements of a subjective world. In practice, Habermas (1987 :120) suggests all three worlds are implicated in any speech act but that there will be a predominant orientation to one of these. To rephrase this in a crude form, when speakers engage in communication, they refer to things and facts and observations relating to external nature, to aspects of interpersonal relations, and to aspects of private inner subjective worlds (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc.). One of the problems with locating CTA in “communication research” has been that the communications referred to are but a special and limited form of action (often what Habermas would call strategic acts). In other words, television, newspaper, video, and internet communications are just particular forms (with particular features) of action in general. Again we might note in passing that the adoption of the Habermassian perspective on speech acts implies that much of qualitative analysis in particular has tended to focus only on one dimension of communicative action—the subjective and private. In this respect, I would argue that it is much better to look at speeches such as George W Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address as an “account” and to examine what has been recruited into the account; and how what has been recruited is connected or co-associated rather than to use the data to form insights into his (or his adviser’s) thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

In the sections that follow, and with an emphasis on the ideas that I have just expounded, I intend to demonstrate how CTA can be deployed to advantage in almost all forms of inquiry that call upon either interview (or speech-based) data or textual data. In my first example, I will show how CTA can be used to analyze a group of interviews. In the second example, I will show how it can be used to analyze a group of policy documents. In the third, I shall focus on a single interview (a “case”), and in the fourth and final example, I will show how CTA can be used to track the biography of a concept. In each instance, I shall briefly introduce the context of the “problem” on which the research was based, outline the methods of data collection, discuss how the data were analyzed and presented, and underline the ways in which content analysis has sharpened the analytical strategy.

Analyzing a Sample of Interviews: Looking at Concepts and Their Co-Associations in a Semantic Network

My first example of using CTA is based on a research study that was initially undertaken in the early 2000s. It was a project aimed at understanding why older people might reject the offer to be immunized against influenza (at no cost to them). The ultimate objective was to improve rates of immunization in the study area. The first phase of the research was based on interviews with 54 older people in South Wales. The sample included people who had never been immunized, some who had refused immunization, and some who had accepted immunization. Within each category, respondents were randomly selected from primary care physician patient lists, and the data were initially analyzed “thematically” and published accordingly ( Evans, Prout, Prior, et al., 2007 ). A few years later, however, I returned to the same data set to look at a different question—how (older) lay people talked about colds and flu, especially how they distinguished between the two illnesses and how they understood the causes of the two illnesses (see Prior, Evans, & Prout, 2011 ). Fortunately, in the original interview schedule, we had asked people about how they saw the “differences between cold and flu” and what caused flu, so it was possible to reanalyze the data with such questions in mind. In that frame, the example that follows demonstrates not only how CTA might be used on interview data, but also how it might be used to undertake a secondary analysis of a pre-existing data set ( Bryman, 2008 ).

As with all talk about illness, talk about colds and flu is routinely set within a mesh of concerns—about causes, symptoms, and consequences. Such talk comprises the base elements of what has at times been referred to as the “explanatory model” of an illness ( Kleinman, Eisenberg, & Good, 1978 ). In what follows, I shall focus almost entirely on issues of causation as understood from the viewpoint of older people; the analysis is based on the answers that respondents made in response to the question, “How do you think people catch flu?”

Semi-structured interviews of the kind undertaken for a study such as this are widely used and are often characterized as akin to “a conversation with a purpose” ( Kahn & Cannell, 1957 :97). One of the problems of analyzing the consequent data is that, although the interviewer holds to a planned schedule, the respondents often reflect in a somewhat unstructured way about the topic of investigation, so it is not always easy to unravel the web of talk about, say, “causes” that occurs in the interview data. In this example, causal agents of flu, inhibiting agents, and means of transmission were often conflated by the respondents. Nevertheless, in their talk people did answer the questions that were posed, and in the study referred to here, that talk made reference to things such as “bugs” (and “germs”) as well as viruses; but the most commonly referred to causes were “the air” and the “atmosphere.” The interview data also pointed toward means of transmission as “cause”—so coughs and sneezes and mixing in crowds figured in the causal mix. Most interesting perhaps was the fact that lay people made a nascent distinction between facilitating factors (such as bugs and viruses) and inhibiting factors (such as being resistant, immune, or healthy), so that in the presence of the latter, the former are seen to have very little effect. Here are some shorter examples of typical question-response pairs from the original interview data.

(R:32): “How do you catch it [the flu]? Well, I take it its through ingesting and inhaling bugs from the atmosphere. Not from sort of contact or touching things. Sort of airborne bugs. Is that right?” (R:3): “I suppose it’s [the cause of flu] in the air. I think I get more diseases going to the surgery than if I stayed home. Sometimes the waiting room is packed and you’ve got little kids coughing and spluttering and people sneezing, and air conditioning I think is a killer by and large I think air conditioning in lots of these offices”. (R:46): “I think you catch flu from other people. You know in enclosed environments in air conditioning which in my opinion is the biggest cause of transferring diseases is air conditioning. Worse thing that was ever invented that was. I think so, you know. It happens on aircraft exactly the same you know.”

Alternatively, it was clear that for some people being cold, wet, or damp could also serve as a direct cause of flu; thus:

Interviewer: “OK, good. How do you think you catch the flu?” (R:39): “Ah. The 65 dollar question. Well, I would catch it if I was out in the rain and I got soaked through. Then I would get the flu. I mean my neighbour up here was soaked through and he got pneumonia and he died. He was younger than me: well, 70. And he stayed in his wet clothes and that’s fatal. Got pneumonia and died, but like I said, if I get wet, especially if I get my head wet, then I can get a nasty head cold and it could develop into flu later.”

As I suggested earlier, despite the presence of bugs and germs, viruses, the air, and wetness or dampness, “catching” the flu is not a matter of simple exposure to causative agents. Thus some people hypothesized that within each person there is a measure of immunity or resistance or healthiness that comes into play and that is capable of counteracting the effects of external agents. For example, being “hardened” to germs and harsh weather can prevent a person getting colds and flu. Being “healthy” can itself negate the effects of any causative agents, and healthiness is often linked to aspects of “good” nutrition and diet and not smoking cigarettes. These mitigating and inhibiting factors can either mollify the effects of infection or prevent a person “catching” the flu entirely. Thus (R:45) argued that it was almost impossible for him to catch flu or cold “[c]os I got all this resistance.” Interestingly respondents often used possessive pronouns in their discussion of immunity and resistance (“my immunity” and “my resistance”)—and tended to view them as personal assets (or capital) that might be compromised by mixing with crowds.

By implication, having a weak immune system can heighten the risk of contracting cold and flu and might therefore spur one on to take preventive measures such as accepting a flu jab. There are some, of course, who believe that it is the flu jab that can cause the flu and other illnesses. An example of what might be called lay “epidemiology” ( Davison, Davey-Smith, & Frankel, 1991 ) is evident in the following extract.

(R:4): “Well, now it’s coincidental you know that [my brother] died after the jab, but another friend of mine, about 8 years ago, the same happened to her. She had the jab and about six months later, she died, so I know they’re both coincidental, but to me there’s a pattern.”

Normally, results from studies such as this are presented in exactly the same way as has just been set out. Thus the researcher highlights given themes that are said to have emerged out of the data and then provides appropriate extracts from the interviews to illustrate and substantiate the relevant themes. However, one very reasonable question that any critic might ask about the selected data extracts concerns the extent to which they are “representative” of the material in the data set as a whole. Maybe, for example, the author has been unduly selective in his or her use of both themes and quotations. Perhaps, as a consequence, the author has ignored or left out talk that does not fit their arguments or extracts that might be considered dull and uninteresting compared to more exotic material. And these kinds of issues and problems are certainly common to the reporting of almost all forms of qualitative research. However, the adoption of CTA techniques can help to mollify such problems. This is so because by using CTA we can indicate the extent to which we have used all or just some of the data, and we can provide a view of the content of the entire sample of interviews rather than just the content and flavor of merely one or two interviews. In this light, we need to consider Figure 18.1 . The figure is based on counting the number of references in the 54 interviews to the various “causes” of the flu, though references to the flu jab (i.e., inoculation) as a cause of flu have been ignored for the purpose of this discussion). The node sizes reflect the relative importance of each cause as determined by the concept count (frequency of occurrence). The links between nodes reflect the degree to which causes are co-associated in interview talk and are calculated according to a co-occurrence index (see, e.g., SPSS, 2007 :183).

Given this representation, we can immediately assess the relative importance of the different causes as referred to in the interview data. Thus we can see that such things as (poor) “hygiene” and “foreigners” were mentioned as a potential cause of flu—but mention of hygiene and foreigners was nowhere near so important as references to “the air” or to “crowds” or to “coughs and sneezes.” In addition, we can also determine the strength of the connections that interviewees made between one cause and another. Thus there are relatively strong links between “resistance” and “coughs and sneezes,” for example.

In fact, Figure 18.1 divides causes into the “external” and the “internal,” or the facilitating and the impeding (lighter and darker nodes). Among the former I have placed such things as crowds, coughs, sneezes, and the air while among the latter I have included “resistance,” “immunity,” and “health.” That division, of course, is a product of my conceptualizing and interpreting the data, but whichever way we organize the findings, it is evident that talk about the causes of flu belongs in a web or mesh of concerns that would be difficult to represent by the use of individual interview extracts alone. Indeed, it would be impossible to demonstrate how the semantics of causation belong to a culture (rather than to individuals) in any other way. In addition I would argue that the counting involved in the construction of the diagram functions as a kind of check on researcher interpretations and provides a source of visual support for claims that an author might make about, say, the relative importance of “damp” and “air” as perceived causes of disease. Finally, the use of CTA techniques allied with aspects of conceptualization and interpretation has enabled us to approach the interview data as a set and to consider the respondents as belonging to a community rather than regarding them merely as isolated and disconnected individuals, each with their own views. It has also enabled us to squeeze some new findings out of old data, and I would argue that it has done so with advantage. There are of course other advantages to using CTA to explore data sets, which I highlight in the next section.

What causes flu? A lay perspective. Factors listed as causes of colds and flu in 54 interviews. Node size is proportional to number of references “as causes.” Line thickness is proportional to co-occurrence of any two “causes” in the set of interviews.

Analyzing a Sample of Documents: Using Content Analysis to Verify Claims

Policy analysis is a difficult business. For a start, it is never entirely clear where (social, health, economic, environmental) policy actually is. Is it in documents (as published by governments, think tanks, and research centres), in action (what people actually do), or in speech (what people say)? Perhaps it rests in a mixture of all three realms. Yet wherever it may be, it is always possible, at the very least, to identify a range of policy texts and to focus on the conceptual or semantic webs in terms of which government officials and other agents (such as politicians) talk about the relevant policy issues. Furthermore, in so far as policy is recorded—in speeches, pamphlets, and reports—we may begin to speak of specific policies as having a history or a pedigree that unfolds through time (think, e.g., of US or UK health policies during the Clinton years or the Obama years). And in so far as we consider “policy” as having a biography or a history, we can also think of studying policy narratives.

Though firmly based in the world of literary theory, narrative method has been widely used for both the collection and the analysis of data concerning ways in which individuals come to perceive and understand various states of health, ill health, and disability ( Frank, 1995 ; “ Hydén, 1997 ). Narrative techniques have also been adapted for use in clinical contexts and allied to concepts of healing ( Charon, 2006 ). In both social scientific and clinical work, however, the focus is invariably on individuals and on how individuals “tell” stories of health and illness. Yet narratives can also belong to collectives—such as political parties and ethnic and religious groups—just as much as to individuals, and in the latter case there is a need to collect and analyse data that are dispersed across a much wider range of materials than can be obtained from the personal interview. In this context, Roe (1994) has demonstrated how narrative method can be applied to an analysis of national budgets, animal rights, and environmental policies.

An extension of the concept of narrative to policy discourse is undoubtedly useful ( Newman & Vidler, 2006 ), but how might such narratives be analyzed? What strategies can be used to unravel the form and content of a narrative, especially in circumstances where the narrative might be contained in multiple (policy) documents, authored by numerous individuals, and published across a span of time rather than in a single, unified text such as a novel? Roe (1994) , unfortunately, is not in any way specific about analytical procedures apart from offering the useful rule to “never stray too far from the data” (1994:xii). So in this example I will outline a strategy for tackling such complexities. In essence, it is a strategy that combines techniques of linguistically (rule) based content analysis with a theoretical and conceptual frame that enables us to unraveland identify the core features of a policy narrative. My substantive focus is on documents concerning health service delivery policies published 2000–2009 in the constituent countries of the UK (that is, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—all of which have different political administrations).

Narratives can be described and analyzed in various ways, but for our purposes we can say that they have three key features: they point to a chronology, they have a plot and they contain “characters.”

Chronology : All narratives have beginnings; they also have middles and endings, and these three stages are often seen as comprising the fundamental structure of narrative text. Indeed, in his masterly analysis of time and narrative, Ricoeur (1984) argues that it is in the unfolding chronological structure of a narrative that one finds its explanatory (and not merely descriptive) force. By implication, one of the simplest strategies for the examination of policy narratives is to locate and then divide a narrative into its three constituent parts—beginning, middle, and end.

Unfortunately, while it can sometimes be relatively easy to locate or choose a beginning to a narrative, it can be much more difficult to locate an end point. Thus in any illness narrative, a narrator might be quite capable of locating the start of an illness process (in an infection, accident, or other event) but unable to see how events will be resolved in an ongoing and constantly unfolding life. As a consequence, both narrators and researchers usually find themselves in the midst of an emergent present—a present without a known and determinate end (see, e.g., Frank, 1995 ). Similar considerations arise in the study of policy narratives where chronology is perhaps best approached in terms of (past) beginnings, (present) middles, and projected futures.

Plot : According to Ricoeur (1984) , our basic ideas about narrative are best derived from the work and thought of Aristotle who in his Poetics sought to establish “first principles” of composition. For Ricoeur, as for Aristotle, plot ties things together. It “brings together factors as heterogeneous as agents, goals, means, interactions, circumstances, unexpected results” (1984:65) into the narrative frame. For Aristotle, it is the ultimate untying or unraveling of the plot that releases the dramatic energy of the narrative.

Character : Characters are most commonly thought of as individuals, but they can be considered in much broader terms. Thus the French semiotician A. J. Greimas (1970) , for example, suggested that, rather than think of characters as people, it would be better to think in terms of what he called “actants” and of the functions that such actants fulfill within a story. In this sense geography, climate, and capitalism can be considered as characters every bit as much as aggressive wolves and Little Red Riding Hood. Further, he argued that the same character (actant) can be considered to fulfill many functions and the same function performed by many characters. Whatever else, the deployment of the term actant certainly helps us to think in terms of narratives as functioning and creative structures. It also serves to widen our understanding of the ways in which concepts, ideas, and institutions, as well “things” in the material world can influence the direction of unfolding events every bit as much as conscious human subjects. Thus, for example, the “American people,” “the nation,” “the constitution,” “ the West,” “tradition,” and “Washington” can all serve as characters in a policy story.

As I have already suggested, narratives can unfold across many media and in numerous arenas—speech and action, as well as text. Here, however, my focus is solely on official documents—all of which are UK government policy statements as listed in Table 18.1 . The question is how might CTA help us unravel the narrative frame?

It might be argued that a simple reading of any document should familiarize the researcher with elements of all three policy narrative components (plot, chronology, and character). However, in most policy research, we are rarely concerned with a single and unified text as is the case with a novel, but rather with multiple documents written at distinctly different times by multiple (usually anonymous) authors that notionally can range over a wide variety of issues and themes. In the full study, some 19 separate publications were analyzed across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Naturally, to list word frequencies—still less to identify co-occurrences and semantic webs in large data sets (covering hundreds of thousand of words and footnotes)—cannot be done manually but rather requires the deployment of complex algorithms and text-mining procedures. To this end I analyzed the 19 documents using “Text Mining for Clementine” ( SPSS, 2007 ).

Text-mining procedures begin by providing an initial list of concepts based on the lexicon of the text but which can be weighted according to word frequency and which take account of elementary word associations. For example, learning disability, mental health, and performance management indicate three concepts, not six words. Using such procedures on the aforementioned documents gives the researcher an initial grip on the most important concepts in the document set of each country. Note that this is much more than a straightforward concordance analysis of the text and is more akin to what Ryan & Bernard (2000) have referred to as “semantic analysis” and Carley (1993) has referred to as “concept” and “mapping” analysis.

So the first task was to identify and then extract the core concepts, thus identifying what might be called “key” characters or actants in each of the policy narratives. For example, in the Scottish documents such actants included “Scotland” and the “Scottish people,” as well as “health” and the “NHS,” among others; while in the Welsh documents it was “the people of Wales” and “Wales” that figured largely—thus emphasizing how national identity can play every bit as important a role in a health policy narrative as concepts such as “health,” “hospitals,” and “wellbeing.”

Having identified key concepts it was then possible to track concept clusters in which particular actants or characters are embedded. Such cluster analysis is dependent on the use of co-occurrence rules and the analysis of synonyms, whereby it is possible to get a grip on the strength of the relationships between the concepts, as well as the frequency with which the concepts appear in the collected texts. In Figure 18.2 , I provide an example of a concept cluster. The diagram indicates the nature of the conceptual and semantic web in which various actants are discussed. The diagrams further indicate strong (solid line) and weaker (dotted line) connections between the various elements in any specific mix, and the numbers indicate frequency counts for the individual concepts. Using Clementine , the researcher is unable to specify in advance which clusters will emerge from the data. One cannot, for example, choose to have an NHS cluster. In that respect, these diagrams not only provide an array in terms of which concepts are located, but also serve as a check on and to some extent validation of the interpretations of the researcher. Of course none of this tells us what the various narratives contained within the documents might be. They merely point to key characters and relationships both within and between the different narratives. So having indicated the techniques used to identify the essential parts of the four policy narratives, it is now time to sketch out their substantive form.

It may be useful to note that Aristotle recommended brevity in matters of narrative —deftly summarising the whole of the Odyssey in just seven lines. In what follows, I attempt—albeit somewhat weakly—to emulate that example by summarising a key narrative of English health services policy in just four paragraphs. The citations are of Department of Health publications (by year) as listed in Table 18.1 . Note how the narrative unfolds in relation to the dates of publication. In the English case (though not so much in the other UK countries), it is a narrative that is concerned to introduce market forces into what is and has been a state-managed health service. Market forces are justified in terms of improving opportunities for the consumer (i.e., the patients in the service), and the pivot of the newly envisaged system is something called “patient choice” or “choice.” This is how the story unfolds as told through the policy documents between 2000–2008 (see Table 18.1 ).

The advent of the NHS in 1948 was a “seminal event” (2000:8), but under successive Conservative administrations the NHS was seriously underfunded (2006:3). The (New Labour) government will invest (2000) or already has (2003:4) invested extensively in infrastructure and staff, and the NHS is now on a “journey of major improvement” (2004:2). But “more money is only a starting point” (2000:2), and the journey is far from finished. Continuation requires some fundamental changes of “culture” (2003:6). In particular, the NHS remains unresponsive to patient need, and “[a]ll too often, the individual needs and wishes are secondary to the convenience of the services that are available. This ‘one size fits all’ approach is neither responsive, equitable nor person-centred” (2003:17). In short, the NHS is a 1940s system operating in a twenty-first-century world (2000:26). Change is therefore needed across the “whole system” (2005:3) of care and treatment.

Above all, we have to recognize that we “live in a consumer age” (2000:26). People’s expectations have changed dramatically (2006:129), and people want more choice, more independence, and more control (2003:12) over their affairs. Patients are no longer, and should not be considered as, “passive recipients” of care (2003:62), but wish to be and should be (2006:81) actively “involved” in their treatments (2003:38, 2005:18)—indeed, engaged in a partnership (2003:22) of respect with their clinicians. Furthermore, most people want a personalized service “tailor made to their individual needs” (2000:17, 2003:15, 2004:1, 2006:83)—“[a] service which feels personal to each and every individual within a framework of equity and good use of public money” (2003:6).

To advance the necessary changes, “patient choice” needs to be and “will be strengthened” (2000:89). “Choice” must be made to “happen” (2003), and it must be “real” (2003:3, 2004:5, 2005:20, 2006:4). Indeed, it must be “underpinned” (2003:7) and “widened and deepened” (2003:6) throughout the entire system of care.

If “we” expand and underpin patient choice in appropriate ways and engage patients in their treatment systems, then levels of patient satisfaction will increase (2003:39), and their choices will lead to a more “efficient” (2003:5, 2004:2, 2006:16) and effective (2003:62, 2005:8) use of resources. Above all, the promotion of choice will help to drive up “standards” of care and treatment (2000:4, 2003:12, 2004:3, 2005:7, 2006:3). Furthermore, the expansion of choice will serve to negate the effects of the “inverse care law,” whereby those who need services most tend to get catered for the least (2000:107, 2003:5, 2006:63), and it will thereby help in moderating the extent of health inequalities in the society in which we live. “The overall aim of all our reforms,” therefore, “is to turn the NHS from a top down monolith into a responsive service that gives the patient the best possible experience. We need to develop an NHS that is both fair to all of us, and personal to each of us” (2003:5).

Concept cluster for “care” in six English policy documents, 2000–2007. Line thickness is proportional to the strength co-occurrence co-efficient. Node size reflects relative frequency of concept, and (numbers) refer to the frequency of concept. Solid lines indicate relationships between terms within the same cluster, and dotted lines indicate relationships between terms in different clusters.

We can see how most—though not all—of the elements of this story are represented in Figure 18.2 . In particular we can see strong (co-occurrence) links between “care” and “choice” and how partnership, performance, control, and improvement have a prominent profile. There are of course some elements of the web that have a strong profile (in terms of node size and links) but to which we have not referred; access, information, primary care, and waiting times are four. As anyone well versed in English health care policy would know, these have important roles to play in the wider, consumer-driven narrative. However, by rendering the excluded as well as included elements of that wider narrative visible, the concept web provides a degree of verification on the content of the policy story as told herein and on the scope of its “coverage.”

In following through on this example, we have of course moved from content analysis to a form of discourse analysis (in this instance narrative analysis). That shift underlines aspects of both the versatility of CTA and some of its weaknesses—versatility in the sense that CTA can be readily combined with other methods of analysis and in the way in which the results of the CTA help us to check and verify the claims of the researcher. The weakness of the diagram compared to the narrative is that CTA on its own is a somewhat one-dimensional and static form of analysis, and while it is possible to introduce time and chronology into the diagrams, the diagrams themselves remain lifeless in the absence of some form of discursive overview. (For a fuller analysis of these data see, Prior, Hughes, & Peckham, 2012 ).

Analyzing a Single Interview: The Role of Content Analysis in a Case Study

So far I have focused on using content analysis on a sample of interviews and on a sample of documents. In the first instance, I recommended CTA for its capacity to tell us something about what is seemingly central to interviewees and for demonstrating how what is said is linked (in terms of a concept network). In the second instance, I reaffirmed the virtues of co-occurrence and network relations, but this time in the context of a form of discourse analysis. I also suggested that CTA can serve an important role in the process of verification of a narrative and its academic interpretation. In this section, however, I am going to link the use of CTA to another style of research—case study—to show how CTA might be used to analyze a single “case.”

Case study is a term used in multiple and often ambiguous ways. However, Gerring (2004 :342) defines it as “an intensive study of a single unit for the purpose of understanding a larger class of (similar) units.” As Gerring points out, case study does not necessarily imply a focus on N = 1, although that is indeed the most logical number for case study research ( Ragin & Becker, 1992 ). Naturally, an N of 1 can be immensely informative, and whether we like it or not we often have only one N to study (think, e.g., of the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster, or of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center). In the clinical sciences, of course, case studies are widely used to represent the “typical” features of a wider class of phenomena, and often used to define a kind or syndrome (as is in the field of clinical genetics). Indeed, at the risk of mouthing a tautology, one can say that the distinctive feature of case study is its focus on a case in all of its complexity—rather than on individual variables and their inter-relationships, which tends to be a point of focus for large N research.

There was a time when case study was central to the science of psychology. Breuer and Freud’s (2001) famous studies of “hysteria” (orig. 1895) provide an early and outstanding example of the genre in this respect, but as with many of the other styles of social science research, the influence of case studies waned with the rise of much more powerful investigative techniques—including experimental methods—driven by the deployment of new statistical technologies. Ideographic studies consequently gave way to the current fashion for statistically driven forms of analysis that focus on causes and cross-sectional associations between variables rather than ideographic complexity.

In the example that follows, we will look at the consequences of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) on just one individual. The analysis is based on an interview with a person suffering from such an injury, and it was one of 32 interviews carried out with people who had experienced a TBI. The objective of the original research was to develop an outcome measure for TBI that was sensitive to the sufferer’s (rather than the health professional’s) point of view. In our original study (see Morris, Prior, Deb et al., 2005 ), interviews were also undertaken with 27 carers of the injured with the intention of comparing their perceptions of TBI to those of the people for which they cared. A sample survey was also undertaken to elicit views about TBI from a much wider population of patients than was studied via interview.

In the introduction, I referred to Habermas and the concept of the “lifeworld.” Lifeworld ( Lebenswelt ) is a concept that first arose out of twentieth-century German philosophy. It constituted a specific focus for the work of Alfred Schutz (see, e.g., Schutz and Luckman, 1974 ). Schutz described the lifeworld as “that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult simply takes-for-granted in an attitude of common sense” (1974:3). Indeed, it was the routine and taken-for-granted quality of such a world that fascinated Schutz. As applied to the worlds of those with head injuries, the concept has particular resonance because head injuries often result in that taken-for-granted quality being disrupted and fragmented, ending in what Russian neuropsychologist A.R. Luria once described as “shattered” worlds ( Luria, 1975 ). As well as providing another excellent example of a case study, Luria’s work is also pertinent because he sometimes argued for a “romantic science” of brain injury—that is, a science that sought to grasp the world view of the injured patient by paying attention to an unfolding and detailed personal “story” of the head injured as well as to the neurological changes and deficits associated with the injury itself. In what follows, I shall attempt to demonstrate how CTA might be used to underpin such an approach.

In the original research, we began analysis by a straightforward reading of the interview transcripts. Unfortunately, a simple reading of a text or an interview can, strangely, mislead the reader into thinking that some issues or themes are actually more important than is warranted by the actual contents of the text. How that comes about is not always clear, but it probably has something to do with a desire to develop “findings” and our natural capacity to overlook the familiar in favor of the unusual. For that reason alone, it is always useful to subject any text to some kind of concordance analysis—that is, generating a simple frequency list of words used in an interview or text. Given the current state of technology, one might even speak these days of using text-mining procedures such as the aforementioned Clementine to undertake such a task. By using Clementine, and as we have seen, it is also possible to measure the strength of co-occurrence links between elements (i.e., words and concepts) in the entire data set (in this example, 32 interviews), though for a single interview these aims can just as easily be achieved using much simpler, low-tech strategies.

By putting all 32 interviews into the database, a number of common themes emerged. For example, it was clear that “time” entered into the semantic web in a prominent manner, and it was clearly linked to such things as “change,” “injury,” “the body,” and what can only be called the “I was.” Indeed, time runs through the 32 stories in many guises, and the centrality of time is of course a reflection of storytelling and narrative recounting in general—chronology, as we have noted, being a defining feature of all story telling ( Ricoeur, 1984 ). Thus sufferers recounted both the events surrounding their injury and provided accounts as to how the injuries affected their present life and future hopes. As to time present, much of the patient story circled around activities of daily living—walking, working, talking, looking, feeling, remembering, and so forth.

Understandably, the word and the concept of “injury” featured largely in the interviews, though it was a word most commonly associated with discussions of physical consequences of injury. There were many references in that respect to injured arms, legs, hands, and eyes. There were also references to “mind”—though with far lesser frequency than with references to the body and to body parts. Perhaps none of this is surprising. However, one of the most frequent concepts in the semantic mix was the “I was” (716 references). The statement “I was,” or “I used to” was in turn strongly connected to terms such as “the accident” and “change.” Interestingly, the “I was” overwhelmingly eclipsed the “I am” in the interview data (the latter with just 63 references). This focus on the “I was” appears in many guises. For example, it is often associated with the use of the passive voice: “I was struck by a car;” “I was put on the toilet;” “I was shipped from there then, transferred to [Cityville];” “I got told that I would never be able...;” “I was sat in a room,” and so forth. In short, the “I was” is often associated with things, people, and events acting upon the injured person. More importantly, however, the appearance of the “I was” is often used to preface statements signifying a state of loss or change in the person’s course of life—that is, as an indicator for talk about the patient’s shattered world. For example, Patient 7122 stated, “The main (effect) at the moment is I’m not actually with my children, I can’t really be their mum at the moment. I was a caring Mum, but I can’t sort of do the things that I want to be able to do like take them to school. I can’t really do a lot on my own. Like crossing the roads.”

Another patient stated, “Everything is completely changed. The way I was... I can’t really do anything at the moment. I mean my German, my English, everything’s gone. Job possibilities is out the window. Everything is just out of the window... I just think about it all the time actually every day you know. You know it has destroyed me anyway, but if I really think about what has happened I would just destroy myself.”

Each of these quotations in its own way serves to emphasize how life has changed and how the patient’s world has changed. In that respect, we can say that one of the major outcomes arising from TBI may be substantial “biographical disruption” ( Bury, 1982 ), whereupon key features of an individual’s life course are radically altered forever. Indeed, as Becker (1997 :37) argues in relation to a wide array of life events, “When their health is suddenly disrupted, people are thrown into chaos. Illness challenges one’s knowledge of one’s body. It defies orderliness. People experience the time before their illness and its aftermath as two separate entities.” Indeed, this notion of a cusp in personal biography is particularly well illustrated by Luria’s patient Zasetsky; the latter often refers to being a “newborn creature” ( Luria, 1975 :24, 88), a shadow of a former self (1975;25), and as having his past “wiped out” (1975: 116).

However, none of this tells us about how these factors come together in the life and experience of one individual. When we focus on an entire set of interviews, we necessarily lose the rich detail of personal experience and tend instead to rely on a conceptual rather than a graphic description of effects and consequences (to focus on, say, “memory loss,” rather than loss of memory about family life). The contents of Figure 18.3 attempt to correct that vision. It records all of the things that a particular respondent (Patient 7011 )used to do and liked doing. It records all of the things that he says that can no longer do (at one year after injury), and it records all of the consequences that he suffered from his head injury at the time of interview. Thus we see references to epilepsy (his “fits”), paranoia (the patient spoke of his suspicions concerning other people, people scheming behind his back, and his inability to trust others), deafness, depression, and so forth. Note that, although I have inserted a future tense into the web (“I will”), such a statement never appeared in the transcript. I have set it there for emphasis and to show how for this person the future fails to connect to any of the other features of his world except in a negative way. Thus he states at one point that he cannot think of the future because it makes him feel depressed (see Fig. 18.3). The line thickness of the arcs reflect the emphasis that the subject placed on the relevant “outcomes” in relation to the “I was” and the “now” during the interview. Thus we see that factors affecting his concentration and balance loom large but that he is also concerned about his being dependent on others, his epileptic fits, and his being unable to work and drive a vehicle. The schism in his life between what he used to do, what cannot now do, and his current state of being is nicely represented in the CTA diagram.

What have we gained from executing this kind of analysis? For a start, we have moved away from a focus on variables, frequencies, and causal connections (e.g., a focus on the proportion of people with TBI who suffer from memory problems or memory problems and speech problems) and refocused on how the multiple consequences of a TBI link together in one person. In short, instead of developing a narrative of acting variables, we have emphasized a narrative of an acting individual ( Abbott, 1992 :62). Second, it has enabled us to see how the consequences of a TBI connect to an actual lifeworld (and not simply an injured body). So the patient is not viewed just as having a series of discrete problems such as balancing, or staying awake, which is the usual way of assessing outcomes, but is seen as someone struggling to come to terms with an objective world of changed things, people, and activities (missing work is not, for example, routinely considered an “outcome” of head injury). Third, by focusing on what the patient was saying, we gain insight into something that is simply not visible by concentrating on single outcomes or symptoms alone—namely, the void that rests at the center of the interview, what I have called the “I was.” Fourth, we have contributed to understanding a type, for the case that we have read about is not simply a case of “John” or “Jane” but a case of TBI, and in that respect it can add to many other accounts of what it is like to experience head injury—including one of the most well documented of all TBI cases, that of Zatetsky. Finally, we have opened up the possibility of developing and comparing cognitive maps ( Carley, 1993 ) for different individuals, and thereby gained insight into how alternative cognitive frames of the world arise and operate.

The shattered world of patient 7011. Thickness of lines (arcs) are proportional to the frequency of reference to the “outcome” by the patient during interview.

Tracing the biography of a concept

In the previous sections, I emphasised the virtues of CTA for its capacity to link into a data set in its entirety—and how the use of CTA can counter any tendency of a researcher to be selective and partial in the presentation and interpretation of information contained in interviews and documents. However, that does not mean that we always have to take an entire document or interview as the data source. Indeed, it is possible to select (on rational and explicit grounds) sections of documentation and to conduct the CTA on the chosen portions. In the example that follows, I do just that. The sections that I chose to concentrate on are titles and abstracts of academic papers—rather than the full texts. The research on which the following is based is concerned with a biography of a concept and is being conducted in conjunction with a PhD student of mine, Joanne Wilson. Joanne thinks of this component of the study more in terms of a “scoping study” than of a biographical study, and that too is a useful framework for structuring the context in which CTA can be used. Scoping studies ( Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ) are increasingly used in health related research to “map the field” and to get a sense of the range of work that has been conducted on a given topic. Such studies can also be used to refine research questions and research designs. In our investigation the scoping study was centred on the concept of “well-being.” During the past decade or so, “well-being” has emerged as an important research target for governments and corporations as well as for academics, yet it is far from clear to what the term refers. Given the ambiguity of meaning, it is clear that a scoping review, rather than either a systematic review or a narrative review of available literature, would be best suited to our goals.

The origins of the concept of well-being can be traced at least as far back as the fourth century B.C., when philosophers produced normative explanations of the good life (e.g., eudaimonia, hedonia, and harmony). However, contemporary interest in the concept seemed to have been regenerated by the concerns of economists and most recently psychologists. These days governments are equally concerned with measuring well-being to inform policy and conduct surveys of well-being to assess that state of the nation (see, e.g., Office for National Statistics [ONS], 2012 )—but what are they assessing?

We adopted a two-step process to address the research question, “What is the meaning of ‘well-being’ in the context of public policy?” First, we explored the existing thesauri of eight databases to establish those higher-order headings (if any) under which articles with relevance to well-being might be catalogued. Thus we searched the following databases: Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature [CINAHL], EconLit, Health Management Information Consortium [HMIC], MEDLINE, Philosopher’s Index, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts, and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (WPSA). Each of these databases adopts keyword-controlled vocabularies. In other words, they use inbuilt statistical procedures to link core terms to a set lexis of phrases that depict the concepts contained in the database. Table 18.2 shows each database and its associated taxonomy. The contents of the table point toward a linguistic infrastructure in terms of which academic discourse is conducted, and our task was to extract from this infrastructure the semantic web wherein the concept of “well-being” is situated. We limited the thesaurus terms to “well-being” and its variants (i.e., wellbeing or well being). If the term was returned, it was then exploded to identify any associated terms.

CINAHL = Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature; HMIC = Health Management Information Consortium; WPSA = Worldwide Political Science Abstracts.

To develop the conceptual map, we conducted a free-text search for well-being and its variants within the context of public policy across the same databases. We orchestrated these searches across five separate timeframes: January 1990 to December 1994, January 1995 to December 1999, January 2000 to December 2004, January 2005 to December 2009, and January 2010 to October 2011. Naturally, different disciplines use different words to refer to well-being, each of which may wax and wane in usage over time. The searches thus sought to quantitatively capture any changes in the use and subsequent prevalence of well-being and any referenced terms (i.e., to trace a biography).

It is important to note that we did not intend to provide an exhaustive, systematic search of all the relevant literature. Rather we wanted to establish the prevalence of well-being and any referenced (i.e., allied) terms within the context of public policy. This has the advantage of ensuring that any identified words are grounded in the literature (i.e., they represent words actually used by researchers to talk and write about well-being in policy settings). The searches were limited to abstracts to increase specificity, albeit at some expense to sensitivity, with which we could identify relevant articles.

We also employed inclusion/exclusion criteria to facilitate the process by which we selected articles, thereby minimizing any potential bias arising from our subjective interpretations. We included independent, standalone investigations relevant to the study’s objectives (i.e., concerned with well-being in the context of public policy), which focused on well-being as a central outcome or process and which made explicit reference to “well-being” and “public policy” in either the title or the abstract. We excluded articles that were irrelevant to the study’s objectives, used noun adjuncts to focus on the well-being of specific populations (i.e., children, elderly, women) and contexts (e.g., retirement village), or that focused on deprivation or poverty unless poverty indices were used to understand well-being as opposed to social exclusion. We also excluded book reviews and abstracts describing a compendium of studies.

Using these criteria, Joanne Wilson conducted the review and recorded the results on a template developed specifically for the project, organized chronologically across each database and timeframe. Results were scrutinized by two other colleagues to ensure the validity of the search strategy and the findings. Any concerns regarding the eligibility of studies for inclusion were discussed amongst the research team. I then analyzed the co-occurrence of the key terms in the database. The resultant conceptual map is shown in Figure 18.4 .

The diagram can be interpreted as a visualization of a conceptual space. So when academics write about “well-being” in the context of public policy, they tend to connect the discussion to the other terms in the matrix. “Happiness,” “health,” “economic,” and “subjective,” for example, are relatively dominant terms in the matrix. The node size of these words suggest that references to such entities is only slightly less than reference to well-being itself. However, when we come to analyse how well-being is talked about in detail, we see specific connections come to the fore. Thus the data imply that talk of “subjective well-being” far outweighs discussion of “social well-being,” or “economic well-being.” Happiness tends to act as an independent node (there is only one occurrence of happiness and well-being), probably suggesting that “happiness” is acting as a synonym for wellbeing. Quality of life (QoL) is poorly represented in the abstracts, and its connection to most of the other concepts in the space is very weak—confirming, perhaps, that QoL is unrelated to contemporary discussions of well-being and happiness. The existence of “measures” points to a distinct concern to assess and to quantify expressions of happiness, well-being, economic growth, and gross domestic product. More important and underlying this detail, there are grounds for suggesting that there are in fact a number of tensions in the literature on well-being.

On one hand, the results point toward an understanding of well-being as a property of individuals—as something that they feel or experience. Such a discourse is reflected through the use of words like “happiness,” “subjective,” and “individual.” This individualistic and subjective frame has grown in influence over the past decade in particular, and one of the problems with it is that it tends toward a somewhat content-free conceptualisation of well-being. To feel a sense of well-being one merely states that one is in a state of well-being; to be happy, one merely proclaims that one is happy (cf. ONS, 2012 ). It is reminiscent of the conditions portrayed in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , wherein the rulers of a closely managed society gave their priority to maintaining order and ensuring the happiness of the greatest number—in the absence of attention to justice or freedom of thought or any sense of duty and obligation to others, many of whom were systematically bred in “the hatchery” as slaves.

The position of a concept in a network—a study of “wellbeing.” Node size is proportional to the frequency of terms in 54 selected abstracts. Line thickness is proportional to the co-occurrence of two terms in any phrase of three words (e.g., subjective well-being, economics of well-being, well-being and development).

On the other hand, there is some intimation in our web that the notion of well-being cannot be captured entirely by reference to individuals alone and that there are other dimensions to the concept—that well-being is the outcome or product of, say, access to reasonable incomes, to safe environments, to “development,” and to health and welfare. It is a vision hinted at by the inclusion of those very terms in the network. These different concepts necessarily give rise to important differences concerning how well-being is identified and measured and therefore what policies are most likely to advance well-being. In the first kind of conceptualization, we might improve well-being merely by dispensing what Huxley referred to as “soma” (a super drug that ensured feelings of happiness and elation); in the other case, however, we would need to invest in economic, human, and social capital as the infrastructure for well-being. In any event and even at this nascent level, we can see how content analysis can begin to tease out conceptual complexities and theoretical positions in what is otherwise routine textual data.

Putting the Content of Documents in Their Place

I suggested in my introduction that CTA was a method of analysis—not a method of data collection nor a form of research design. As such, it does not necessarily inveigle us into any specific forms of either design or of data collection, though designs and methods that rely on quantification are dominant. In this closing section, however, I want to raise the issue as to how we should position a study of content in our research strategies as a whole. For we need to keep in mind that documents and records always exist in a context, and that while what is “in” the document may be considered central, a good research plan can often encompass a variety of ways of looking at how content links to context. Hence in what follows I intend to outline how an analysis of content might be combined with other ways of looking at a record or text, and even how the analysis of content might even be positioned as secondary to an examination of a document or record. The discussion calls upon a much broader analysis as presented in Prior (2011) .

I have already stated that basic forms of CTA can serve as an important point of departure for many different types of data analysis—for example, as discourse analysis. Naturally, whenever “discourse” is invoked, there is at least some recognition of the notion that words might actually play a part in structuring the world rather than merely reporting on it or describing it (as is the case with the 2002 State of the Nation address that was quoted in Section “Units of Analysis”). Thus, for example, there is a considerable tradition within social studies of science and technology for examining the place of scientific rhetoric in structuring notions of “nature” and the position of human beings (especially as scientists) within nature (see, e.g., work by Bazerman, 1988 ); Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984 ; and Kay, 2000 ). Nevertheless, little if any of that scholarship situates documents as anything other than as inert objects, either constructed by or waiting patiently to be activated by scientists.

However, in the tradition of the ethnomethodologists ( Heritage, 1991 ) and some adherents of discourse analysis, it is also possible to argue that documents might be more fruitfully approached as a “topic” ( Zimmerman and Pollner; 1971 ) rather than a “resource” (to be scanned for content), in which case the focus would be on the ways in which any given document came to assume its present content and structure. In the field of documentation, these latter approaches are akin to what Foucault (1970) might have called an “archaeology of documentation” and are well represented in studies of such things as how crime, suicide, and other statistics and associated official reports and policy documents are routinely generated. That too is a legitimate point of research focus, and it can often be worth examining the genesis of, say, suicide statistics or statistics about the prevalence of mental disorder in a community as well as using such statistics as a basis for statistical modeling.

Unfortunately, the distinction between topic and resource is not always easy to maintain—especially in the hurly-burly of doing empirical research (see, e.g., Prior, 2003 ). Putting an emphasis on “topic,” however, can open up a further dimension of research, and that concerns the ways in which documents function in the everyday world. And as I have already hinted, when we focus on function, it becomes apparent that documents serve not merely as containers of content but very often as active agents in episodes of interaction and schemes of social organization. In this vein, one can begin to think of an ethnography of documentation. Therein, the key research questions revolve around the ways in which documents are used and integrated into specific kinds of organizational settings, as well as with how documents are exchanged and how they circulate within such settings. Clearly, documents carry content—words, images, plans, ideas, patterns, and so forth—but the manner in which such material is actually called upon and manipulated, and the way in which it functions, cannot be determined (though it may be constrained) by an analysis of content. Thus, Harper’s (1998) study of the use of economic reports inside the International Monetary Fund provides various examples of how “reports” can function to both differentiate and cohere work groups. In the same way. Henderson (1995) illustrates how engineering sketches and drawings can serve as what she calls conscription devices on the workshop floor.

Of course, documents constitute a form of what Latour (1986) would refer to as “immutable mobiles,” and with an eye on the mobility of documents, it is worth noting an emerging interest in histories of knowledge that seek to examine how the same documents have been received and absorbed quite differently by different cultural networks (see, e.g., Burke, 2000 ). A parallel concern has arisen with regard to the newly emergent “geographies of knowledge” (see, e.g., Livingstone, 2005 ). In the history of science, there has also been an expressed interest in the biography of scientific objects ( Latour, 1987 :262) or of “epistemic things” ( Rheinberger, 2000 )—tracing the history of objects independent of the “inventors” and “discoverers” to which such objects are conventionally attached. It is an approach that could be easily extended to the study of documents and is partly reflected in the earlier discussion concerning the meaning of the concept of well-being. Note how in all of these cases a key consideration is how words and documents as “things” circulate and translate from one culture to another; issues of content are secondary.

Clearly, studying how documents are used and how they circulate can constitute an important area of research in its own right. Yet even those who focus on document use can be overly anthropocentric and subsequently overemphasize the potency of human action in relation to written text. In that light, it is interesting to consider ways in which we might reverse that emphasis and instead to study the potency of text and the manner in which documents can influence organizational activities as well as reflect them. Thus Dorothy Winsor (1999) has, for example, examined the ways in which work orders drafted by engineers not only shape and fashion the practices and activities of engineering technicians but construct “two different worlds” on the workshop floor.

In light of this, I will suggest a typology (Table 18.3 ) of the ways in which documents have come to be and can be considered in social research.

While accepting that no form of categorical classification can capture the inherent fluidity of the world, its actors, and its objects, Table 18.3 aims to offer some understanding of the various ways in which documents have been dealt with by social researchers. Thus approaches that fit into cell 1 have been dominant in the history of social science generally. Therein documents (especially as text) have been analyzed and coded for what they contain in the way of descriptions, reports, images, representations, and accounts. In short, they have been scoured for evidence. Data-analysis strategies concentrate almost entirely on what is in the “text” (via various forms of content analysis). This emphasis on content is carried over into cell 2 type approaches with the key differences that analysis is concerned with how document content comes into being. The attention here is usually on the conceptual architecture and socio-technical procedures by means of which written reports, descriptions, statistical data, and so forth are generated. Various kinds of discourse analysis have been used to unravel the conceptual issues, while a focus on socio-technical and rule-based procedures by means of which clinical, police, social work, and other forms of records and reports are constructed has been well represented in the work of ethnomethodologists ( see Prior, 2011 ). In contrast, and in cell 3, the research focus is on the ways in which documents are called upon as a resource by various and different kinds of “user.” Here concerns with document content or how a document has come into being are marginal, and the analysis concentrates on the relationship between specific documents and their use or recruitment by identifiable human actors for purposeful ends. I have already pointed to some studies of the latter kind in earlier paragraphs (e.g., Henderson, 1995 ). Finally, the approaches that fit into cell 4 also position content as secondary. The emphasis here is on how documents as “things” function in schemes of social activity and with how such things can drive, rather than be driven by, human actors. In short, the spotlight is on the vita activa of documentation, and I have provided numerous example of documents as actors in other publications (see Prior, 2003 ; 2008 ; 2011 ).

Content analysis was a method originally developed to analyze mass media “messages” in an age of radio and newspaper print, and well before the digital age. Unfortunately, it struggles to break free of its origins and continues to be associated with the quantitative analysis of “communication.” Yet as I have argued, there is no rational reason why its use has to be restricted to such a narrow field, for it can be used to analyze printed text and interview data (as well as other forms of inscription) in various settings. What it cannot overcome is the fact that it is a method of analysis and not a method of data collection. However, as I have shown, it is an analytical strategy that can be integrated into a variety of research designs and approaches—cross-sectional and longitudinal survey designs, ethnography and other forms of qualitative design, and secondary analysis of pre-existing data sets. Even as a method of analysis it is flexible and can be used either independent of other methods or in conjunction with them. As we have seen, it is easily merged with various forms of discourse analysis and can be used as an exploratory method or as a means of verification. Above all, perhaps, it crosses the divide between “quantitative” and “qualitative” modes of inquiry in social research and offers a new dimension to the meaning of mixed-methods research. I recommend it.

Source : Prior (2008) .

Abbott, A. ( 1992 ). What do cases do? In C. C. Ragin , and H. S. Becker (Eds.). What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 53–82.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Altheide, D. L. ( 1987 ). Ethnographic Content Analysis.   Qualitative Sociology , 10 (1): 65–77.

Arksey H , O’Malley L. ( 2005 ). Scoping studies: Towards a Methodological Framework.   International Journal of Sociological Research Methodology , 8 : 19–32.

Babbie, E. ( 2013 ). The practice of social research. 13th ed . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Bazerman, C. ( 1988 ). Shaping written knowledge. The genre and activity of the experimental article in science . Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Becker, G. ( 1997 ). Disrupted lives. How people create meaning in a chaotic world . London: University of California Press.

Berelson, B. ( 1952 ). Content analysis in communication research . Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Bowker, G. C. and Star, S. L. ( 1999 ). Sorting things out. Classification and its consequences . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Braun, V. , Clarke, V. ( 2006 ). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology.   Qualitative Research in Psychology , 3 : 77–101.

Breuer, J. , Freud, S. ( 2001 ). Studies on Hysteria. In Strachey, L. (Ed.). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud . Vol. 2 . London: Vintage.

Bryman, A. ( 2008 ). Social research methods . 3rd Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Burke, P. ( 2000 ). A social history of knowledge. From Guttenberg to Diderot . Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bury, M. ( 1982 ). Chronic illness as biographical disruption.   Sociology of Health and Illness , 4 : 167–182.

Carley, K. ( 1993 ). Coding choices for textual analysis. A comparison of content analysis and map analysis.   Sociological Methodology , 23 : 75–126.

Charon, R. ( 2006 ). Narrative medicine. Honoring the stories of illness . New York: Oxford University Press.

Creswell, J. W. ( 2007 ). Designing and conducting mixed methods research . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Davison, C. , Davey-Smith, G. , Frankel, S. ( 1991 ). Lay epidemiology and the prevention paradox.   Sociology of Health & Illness , 13 (1): 1–19.

Evans, M. , Prout, H. , Prior, L. , Tapper-Jones, L. , Butler, C. ( 2007 ). A qualitative Study of Lay Beliefs about Influenza,   British Journal of General Practice , 57 :352–358.

Foucault, M. ( 1970 ). The Order of things. An archaeology of the human sciences . London: Tavistock.

Frank, A. ( 1995 ). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gerring, J. ( 2004 ). What is a case study, and what is it good for?   The American Political Science Review , 98 (2): 341–354.

Gilbert, G.N. , Mulkay, M. ( 1984 ). Opening Pandora’s box. A sociological analysis of scientists’ discourse . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Glaser, B.G. , Strauss, A.L. ( 1967 ). The discovery of grounded theory. Strategies for qualitative research . New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Goode, W. J. , Hatt, P. K. ( 1952 ). Methods in social research . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Greimas, A. J. ( 1970 ). Du Sens. Essays sémiotiques . Paris: Ėditions du Seuil.

Habermas, J. ( 1987 ). The theory of communicative action. Vol.2. A critique of functionalist reason . ( T. McCarthy , trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Harper, R. ( 1998 ). Inside the IMF. An ethnography of documents, technology, and organizational action . London: Academic Press.

Henderson, K. ( 1995 ). The political career of a prototype. Visual representation in design engineering,   Social Problems , 42 (2): 274–299.

Heritage, J. ( 1991 ). Garkfinkel and ethnomethodology . Cambridge. Polity Press.

Hydén, L-C. ( 1997 ). ‘ Illness and narrative ’, Sociology of Health & Illness , 19 (1): 48–69.

Kahn, R. , Cannell, C. ( 1957 ). The dynamics of interviewing. Theory, technique and cases . New York: Wiley.

Kay, L. E. ( 2000 ). Who wrote the book of life? A history of the genetic code . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kleinman, A. , Eisenberg, L. , Good, B. ( 1978 ). Culture, illness & care, clinical lessons from anthropologic and cross-cultural research.   Annals of Internal Medicine , 88 (2): 251–258.

Kracauer, S. ( 1952 ). The Challenge of Qualitative Content Analysis’,   Public Opinion Quarterly, Special Issue on International Communications Research (1952–53) , 16 ( 4 ): 631–642.

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

Latour, B. ( 1986 ). Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands,   Knowledge and Society, Studies in Sociology of Culture, Past and Present , 6 : 1–40.

Latour, B. ( 1987 ). Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society . Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Livingstone, D. N. ( 2005 ). Text, talk, and testimony: geographical reflections on scientific habits. An afterword,   British Society for the History of Science . 38 (1): 93–100.

Luria, A.R. ( 1975 ). The man with the shattered world. A history of a brain wound . (Trans. L. Solotaroff ). Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Martin, A. , and Lynch, M. ( 2009 ). Counting things and counting people: The practices and politics of counting,   Social Problems , 56 (2): 243–266.

Merton, R.K. ( 1968 ). Social theory and social structure . New York: Free Press.

Morgan, D. L. ( 1993 ). Qualitative content analysis. A guide to paths not taken,   Qualitative Health Research , 2 : 112–121.

Morgan, D. L. ( 1998 ). Practical Strategies for combining qualitative and quantitative methods,   Qualitative Health Research , 8 (3): 362–376.

Morris, P. G. , Prior, L. , Deb, S. , Lewis, G. , et al. ( 2005 ). Patients’ views on outcome following head injury: a qualitative study,   BMC Family Practice , 6 :30.

Neuendorf, K. A. ( 2002 ). The content analysis guidebook . Thousand Oaks: CA: Sage.

Newman. J , and Vidler. E. ( 2006 ). Discriminating customers, responsible patients, empowered users: consumerism and the modernisation of health care,   Journal of Social Policy , 35 (2): 193–210.

Office for National Statistics ( 2012 ) First ONS Annual Experimental Subjective Well-being Results . London: ONS. Available at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171766_272294.pdf . Accessed July 2013.

Prior, L. ( 2003 ). Using documents in social research . London: Sage.

Prior, L. ( 2008 ). Repositioning Documents in Social Research.   Sociology. Special Issue on Research Methods , 42 : 821–836.

Prior, L. ( 2011 ). Using documents and records in social research . 4 Vols . London: Sage.

Prior, L.   Hughes, D. , Peckham, S. ( 2012 ) The discursive turn in policy analysis and the validation of policy stories,   Journal of Social Policy , 41 (2): 271–289.

Prior, L. , Evans, M. , Prout, H. ( 2011 ). Talking about colds and flu: The lay diagnosis of two common illnesses among older British people,   Social Science and Medicine , 73 : 922–928.

Ragin, C. C. , Becker, H. S. ( 1992 ). What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rheinberger H.-J. , ( 2000 ). Cytoplasmic Particles. The Trajectory of a Scientific Object. In Daston, L. (Ed.). Biographies of scientific objects . Chicago: Chicago University Press, 270–294.

Ricoeur, P. ( 1984 ). Time and narrative . Vol. 1 . ( McLaughlin K. , Pellauer D. trans.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Roe, E. ( 1994 ). Narrative policy analysis, theory and practice . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ryan, G.W. , Bernard, H. R. ( 2000 ). Data management and analysis methods. In Denzin, N.K. , Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.). Handbook of qualitative research . 2nd ed . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 769–802.

Schutz, A. , Luckman, T. ( 1974 ). The structures of the life-world . ( Zaner, R. M. , Engelhardt, H.T. , trans.). London: Heinemann.

SPSS. ( 2007 ). Text Mining for Clementine . 12.0 User’s Guide. Chicago: SPSS.

Weber, R.P. ( 1990 ). Basic content analysis . Newbury Park: CA: Sage.

Winsor, D. ( 1999 ). Genre and activity systems. The role of documentation in maintaining and changing engineering activity systems.   Written Communication , 16 (2): 200–224.

Zimmerman, D. H. , Pollner, M. ( 1971 ). The everyday world as a phenomenon. In Douglas, J. D. (Ed). Understanding everyday life . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 80–103.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

This article is part of the research topic.

Emerging Technologies for the Construction of Renewable Energy-Dominated Power System

The analysis of the threshold value of the complex short-circuit ratio index and its significance in the context of static voltage stability Provisionally Accepted

• 1 School of Electrical Engineering, Shanghai University of Electric Power, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The short-circuit ratio index(SCR) can effectively quantify the voltage support strength in traditional DC grid-connected scenarios, yet it cannot reasonably describe the voltage support strength in diverse device grid connection scenarios. This paper introduces a new calculation method of the complex short-circuit ratio index(  SCR ) and derives the threshold value of the complex short-circuit ratio index to enable a comprehensive quantitative assessment of grid voltage support strength across diverse device grid connection scenarios. Firstly, critical short-circuit ratio(CSCR) under different assumed conditions were derived based on the short-circuit ratio index. Secondly, the calculation method of the complex short-circuit ratio index was introduced, considering both the equivalent impedance angle of the device and the Thevenin equivalent impedance angle. This was followed by the determination of the threshold value of the complex short-circuit ratio(  CSCR ), enabling a precise quantitative evaluation of power grid voltage support strength in diverse device grid connection scenarios. Finally, the example analysis proves the accuracy and efficacy of the complex short-circuit ratio index in assessing the voltage support strength of diverse devices in grid-connected scenarios.

Keywords: Power grid strength, Short-circuit ratio index, Critical short-circuit ratio, Complex short-circuit ratio index, The threshold value of the complex short-circuit ratio

Received: 08 Apr 2024; Accepted: 03 Jun 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Pan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mx. Lei Pan, School of Electrical Engineering, Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai, China

People also looked at