college students who are working and the effect on their grades vs those who don’t.

"Guidelines for Content Analysis Project:

 

For this assignment, you will conduct a content analysis on a topic of your choosing.  This project will require you to specify a research topic, identify a data source, select a sample, code your data, group these codes into meaningful categories, analyze your data (codes), and write a short summary of your findings. Your report will have 7 sections, of which most correspond to the steps you’ll take in conducting your analysis. 

 

The sections:

Research Topic. There are two parts to this section. First, describe the topic you are researching this semester. Then, describe the more specific focus of your content analysis.

 

Data Source. What type of data do you use to address your research topic?

 

Sample. Describe your sample. Note that you are required to include at least 15 cases (documents) in your sample.

 

Coding. Identify at least 7 codes. You do not need to include your coded data in your report but you should discuss how you developed these codes and list the codes you used.

 

Categorizing the Codes. Describe the categories into which you grouped your codes.

 

Analysis. The exact form of your analysis will vary depending upon the coding strategy you applied. Here, you should describe your analytic strategy.

 

Summary of Findings. What are your major findings? What are the implications of these findings (i.e., the social, scientific, and/or theoretical relevance)?

 

More information follows on each section of the paper:

 

Research Topic. You should begin with an explanation of the general topic for your research this quarter. Explain, in your own words, the social or scientific relevance of the topic. You might find it useful to frame your topic as a research question, but this is not required. An example here might be this:

Over the past several decades, Americans have become increasingly devoted to their pets. This is evidenced in the considerable increase in pet adoptions and pet products marketed and sold in the U.S. in the past 30 years, as well as the emergence of pet daycare facilities (add relevant citations). Although sociologists have long considered the importance of familial and social relationships for development, health, and well-being, the significance of pet relationships have received little empirical attention. The purpose of my research is to consider in greater detail Americans’ love of their pets and the attachment many feel towards their non-human companions.

 

Then, describe what aspect of this topic you explore with the content analysis project. Care should be taken to select a question for which you can find appropriate data.  For example, it would be very difficult to find information to address whether views of pets have changed in the past 30 years. But, we all know that there is an abundance of pet food commercials aired on television and printed in commercial media. These commercials might be useful for considering the human/pet bonds that are depicted, which presumably are fabricated to reflect realistic or idealized depictions of human/pet relationships. Because these commercials are so widely available, they could inform a practical content analysis.

 

The next step is to describe how the topic of your content analysis will inform your consideration of your broader research question. It’s critical that you make the linkage between the broader topic and the topic of your content analysis. Here is an example:

For the sake of my content analysis project, I am interested in considering human/pet relationships as they are depicted in pet food commercials. These depictions likely illustrate the norms of human/pet relationships in American society. After all, it is often acknowledged that advertisements reflect shared cultural beliefs and meanings, whether realistic or idealized. Thus, these commercials may provide me with a better understanding of the norms surrounding human/pet relationships or, more specifically, the norms concerning Americans’ love of and attachment to their pets.

 

Data Source. The next step is to identify the source of your data. Above, I have already acknowledged what the source of my data will be, so it would be sufficient to write that, as noted, I will consider pet food commercials.

 

Sample. Your sampling strategy must take into account that you need only 15 cases in your sample. Remember that there are a number of sampling strategies available to you. There are a number of ways you can draw a sample that will be useful for your purposes; the timeframe you select for your sample will be particularly important. For example, I could choose to focus only on dog food commercials or cat food commercials to narrow my sample, but if I choose too large of a timeframe to sample from I will likely have more cases than I need. One approach would be to consider the first 15 pet food commercials aired on one of the major television networks on one random night during prime-time viewing hours (7 p.m. to 10 p.m. CST). There is nothing brilliant about this sampling strategy but it is sufficiently specific to provide the number of cases I need. Alternatives more specific to your topic might include looking at newspaper articles published only in the past week in a major newspaper, opinion/editorial pieces published in one newspaper in the past three months, etc.

 

Coding. The next step is to decide whether you will use an inductive or deductive approach in developing your coding scheme. In developing your codes, bear in mind that there are a number of ways you can code. You can look for specific words or phrases, themes, behaviors, characters, concepts, ideologies, semantics, etc. Returning to the example above, since I am using television commercials for my project, it might be problematic to code for specific words used in the commercials. Instead, it would be more useful to identify certain themes (e.g., acts of affection, the presence of absence of more than one human in the human/pet interactions depicted, references to loving one’s pet, references to wanting the best for one’s pet, where the pet is depicted eating, how the pet eats, etc.).

 

In your report, indicate what type of strategy you used and why. With either approach, identify 7 codes to look for in your analysis. In your report, list the 7 codes that were used in your analysis.

 

Categorizing. Once you have coded the text, images, objects, etc., you are using, think about ways you can group this coded information together. You may find that certain codes also work as categories – this is absolutely fine. For example, I might have a number of different codes that signify acts of affection (petting, kissing, the pet greeting the actor when they come home from work, etc.) and not find it necessary to distinguish between different acts. What is important is that you identify categorical themes that represent the concepts you are interested in and that enable you to investigate your theoretical ideas. These categories may be latent (broader theoretical categories) or manifest (e.g., specific words you were looking for in your analysis). In your report, list the categories you have developed and the coded data that fall under each category.

 

Analysis. Now, all of the data is organized by category. Begin by summarizing the data or describing the frequency of codes in each category. For example, I would note all of the acts of affection I documented in the pet food commercials considered and how many times each act is depicted in this sample. Then, indicate whether certain categories seem more relevant to your topic than others (in other words, isolate meaningful patterns or processes). I might find, for example, that all of the commercials depict numerous acts of affection and, in particular, actors petting dogs or cats, that 75 percent show actors interacting only with pets, yet only in half of the commercials are the pets fed in crystal goblets. You may find it useful to table your findings but this is not required. Your report should include a descriptive summary of your findings.

 

Optional – a more advanced strategy is to consider the relationships among certain codes or categories. This is not required but may be useful. For example, I might consider how often acts of affection are accompanied by references to wanting the best for one’s pet.

 

Summary of findings. State, in a few sentences, what you think are the major findings of your analysis. Here, you are interested in establishing a small set of generalizations from your work. Explain what these findings mean in light of prior work or how they inform your broader research topic."