This week’s in-class exercise was thought-provoking, and much harder than it sounded on the surface. I remember discussing content analysis in Research Methods almost two years ago and thinking, “Oh, that sounds like easy research.” Ha! Contextualizing and conceptualizing content analysis research is far from easy, even when you do so using your very specific research interests. As I may be doing some content analysis in my own dissertation case study, this was a good opportunity for me to see what it’s really like.
As with coding, context is very important in content analysis. I think it is especially important that the researcher have a firm grasp of the phenomenon under consideration before proceeding with analysis. In other words, I don’t think you should just wake up one day and think, “Hey, I believe I’ll analyze some blogs about x even though I have absolutely no background in studying or understanding x.” I believe, after completing the exercise yesterday, that a firm grounding in the history of the phenomenon is necessary to be able to frame your research. If I had not been a school librarian, I don’t think I would have been able to do a very good job of framing my proposed content analysis yesterday, unless I had taken the time to read up on the topic thoroughly beforehand. Of course, this is good advice no matter what methodology you choose. Otherwise, you will just look foolish, right?
I feel like content analysis and open coding overlap in many ways, and it will be interesting to see which approach I choose to take in my dissertation research. I feel like I need to do some more comparing and contrasting before I make a final decision, and perhaps I will end up using a hybrid of the two. Right now, I lean toward open coding because of its flexibility, and because I know that I have the information worlds codebook to guide me; but, as always, I remain open to the possibilities.