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Assignment-01

Content Analysis

Content Analysis is "a research technique for the objective, systematic, and
quantitative description of manifest content of communications".

Content analysis is a research tool focused on the actual content and internal
features of media. It is used to determine the presence of certain words, concepts,
themes, phrases, characters, or sentences within texts or sets of texts and to quantify this
presence in an objective manner. Texts can be defined broadly as books, book chapters,
essays, interviews, discussions, newspaper headlines and articles, historical documents,
speeches, conversations, advertising, theater, informal conversation, or really any
occurrence of communicative language (Berelson, 74).

Approaches of Content Analysis

1. Conventional: In conventional content analysis, coding categories are derived

directly from the text data.
2. Directed: Analysis starts with a theory or relevant research findings as guidance
for initial codes.
3. Summative: A summative content analysis involves counting and comparisons,
usually of keywords or content, followed by the interpretation of the underlying
context.

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.

Types of Content Analysis

There are two general categories of content analysis: conceptual analysis and
relational analysis.
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1. Conceptual Analysis: Conceptual analysis can be thought of as establishing the

existence and frequency of concepts in a text
2. Relational Analysis: Relational analysis builds on conceptual analysis by
examining the relationships among concepts in a text.

Advantages of Content Analysis

Content analysis offers several advantages to research.

• looks directly at communication via texts or transcripts, and hence gets at the
central aspect of social interaction
• can allow for both quantitative and qualitative operations
• can provides valuable historical/cultural insights over time through analysis of
texts
• provides insight into complex models of human thought and language use

Disadvantages of Content Analysis

Content analysis suffers from several advantages, both theoretical and procedural.
In particular, 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
• 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

Cross-cultural studies

Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called Holocultural Studies, is a specialization

in anthropology and sister sciences (sociology,psychology, economics, political science)
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that uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behavior and test
hypotheses about human behavior and culture.

A cross-cultural study is the third form of cross-cultural comparisons. The first is

comparison of case studies, the second is controlled comparison among variants of a
common derivation and the third is comparison within a sample of cases.
Unlike comparative studies, which examines similar characteristics of a few societies,
cross-cultural studies uses a sufficiently large sample so that statistical analysis can be
made to show relationships or lack or relationships between the traits in question. These
studies are surveys of ethnographic data. Cross-cultural studies have been used by social
scientists of many disciplines, particularly cultural anthropology and psychology.

Sources of Bias in Cross-cultural studies

There are three bias sources in cross cultural research:

1. Construct bias: it occurs when the construct measured is not identical across
groups. Construct bias precludes the cross cultural measurement of a construct
with the same measure.
2. Method bias: can result from sample incomparability, instrument characteristics,
tester and interviewer effects, and the method (mode) of administration.
3. Item bias or differential item functioning: Finally, bias can be due to anomalies
at item level (e.g., poor translations); this is called item bias or differential item
functioning. The item is biased as it favors one cultural group across all test score
levels.

Types of Equivalence

1. Structural (or functional) equivalence: An instrument administered in different

cultural group’s shows structural equivalence if it measures the same construct in
both groups.
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2. Measurement unit equivalence: Instruments show this type of equivalence if

their measurement scales have the same units of measurement and a different
origin (such as the Celsius and Kelvin scales in temperature measurement).
3. Scalar (or full score) equivalence: it can direct comparisons be made; it is the
only type of equivalence that allows for the conclusion that average scores
obtained in two cultures are different.