Content analysis is a widely used qualitative research technique. Rather than being a single method, current applications of content analysis show three distinct approaches: conventional, directed, or summative. All three approaches are used to interpret meaning from the content of text data and, hence, adhere to the naturalistic paradigm. The major differences among the approaches are coding schemes, origins of codes, and threats to trustworthiness. In conventional content analysis, coding categories are derived directly from the text data. With a directed approach, analysis starts with a theory or relevant research findings as guidance for initial codes. A summative content analysis involves counting and comparisons, usually of keywords or content, followed by the interpretation of the underlying context. The authors delineate analytic procedures specific to each approach and techniques addressing trustworthiness with hypothetical examples drawn from the area of end-of-life care.

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Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis

Theme identification is one of the most fundamental tasks in qualitative research. It also is one of the most mysterious. Explicit descriptions of theme discovery are rarely found in articles and reports, and when they are, they are often relegated to appendices or footnotes. Techniques are shared among small groups of social scientists, but sharing is impeded by disciplinary or epistemological boundaries. The techniques described here are drawn from across epistemological and disciplinary boundaries. They include both observational and manipulative techniques and range from quick word counts to laborious, in-depth, line-by-line scrutiny. Techniques are compared on six dimensions: (1) appropriateness for data types, (2) required labor, (3) required expertise, (4) stage of analysis, (5) number and types of themes to be generated, and (6) issues of reliability and validity.

Techniques to Identify Themes

Social Network Analysis

This chapter is about methods for managing and analyzing qualitative data. By qualitative data the authors mean text: newspapers, movies, sitcoms, e-mail traffic, folktales, life histories. They also mean narratives--narratives about getting divorced, about being sick, about surviving hand-to-hand combat, about selling sex, about trying to quit smoking. In fact, most of the archaeologically recoverable information about human thought and human behavior is text, the good stuff of social science.

Data Management and Analysis Methods

The measurement of meaning

This study explored how the structure of globalization of technology via intellectual propertynetworks has changed longitudinally, and compares the structures of global trademarks andpatents. It suggests that network analysis provides useful tools for describing recent trends inthe globalization of technology. Network analyses describe which countries have highertechnological capabilities, and also how countries are mutually connected for technologicalcollaboration or transfer. In addition, network analysis confirmed that both the trademark andpatent networks have become decentralized over time.© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Technological Forecasting & Social Change

Contributors Foreword Preface Contents of Previous Volumes The Phase-Interfaced Omnistructure Underlying the Processing of Persuasive Messages, Mark A. Hamilton Self-Organizing Social Systems: Necessary and Surfficient Conditions for the Emergence of Clustering, Consolidation, and Continuing Diversity, Bibb Latane and Andrjez Nowak Message Discrepancy and Persuasion, Stan A. Kaplowitz and Edward L. Fink Persuasion, Public Address, and Progression in the Sciences: Where We Are at What We Do, Michael Allen and Raymond Preiss The Inoculation Model of Resistance to Influence, Michael Pfau News Values and Public Opinion: A Theoretical Account of Media Priming and Framing, Vincent Price and David Tewksbury Attitudes as Nonhierarchcal Clusters in Neural Networks, Joseph Woelfel Connecting Attitude Theory with Cognitive Science, J. Richard Eiser Author Index Subject Index

Progress in Communication Sciences

This article examines the structure of the International Communication Association (ICA) through semantic network analysis. Semantic network analysis examines the relationships among a system's components based on the shared meanings of symbols. Galileo analysis and Quadratic Analysis Procedure revealed that the semantic network for ICA based on paper titles presented to its divisions and interest groups at its 1991 conference had a high degree of correspondence with the affiliation structure reported by Barnett and Danowski. Both networks differentiated the humanistic divisions from the scientific, the mediated from the interpersonal, and the theoretical from the applied. The results are taken to be an indication of the validity of the procedures employed for determining semantic networks. Finally, results are interpreted in regard to Human Communication Research's relationship to its parent organization, ICA.

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A Semantic Network Analysis of the International Communication Association

This research examines the structure of international news flow and its determinants, using network analysis. International newspaper and periodicals trade data in Commodity Trade Statistics published by the United Nations are used to describe the international news flow network. NEGOPY reveals the inequality of international news flow between the core and the periphery. The Western industrialized countries are at the center, dominating international news flow. Cluster analysis reveals that the international news flow network is also structured into eight geographical-linguistic groups. In sum, the periphery is not only dominated by the unequal vertical news exchange between it and the core, but also marginalized by the news exchange among the core. Regression analysis indicates that the structure of international news flow is influenced by a country's economic development, the language(s) its people speak, its physical location, political freedom, and population. Among them, economic development is the m...

The Determinants of International News Flow A Network Analysis

By analyzing the 64 countries that represent the largest number ofinternational student exchanges, this article describes internationalstudent flows from a macro perspective. The findings indicate that theinternational student exchange network remained relatively stable. TheUnited States and most Western industrialized countries maintained theirposition at the center of the network, while East European and Asiancountries have become more central and the African and Middle Eastcountries have stayed peripheral. The results suggest an academichegemony consistent with world economic and political performance. Alliedwith World System Theory, the higher a country's position in the worldsystem, the more central it is in the international student exchangenetwork.

George A. Barnett

Papers

Technological Forecasting & Social Change

Progress in Communication Sciences

A Semantic Network Analysis of the International Communication Association

The Determinants of International News Flow A Network Analysis

Research on international student flows from a macro perspective: A network analysis of 1985, 1989 and 1995