Social Research

Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1989), Chapter 7.

Content Analysis is a technique by which objective, statistical methods may be applied to documents (which may include media such as television show tapes, as well as written documents) to determine the attitudes, assumptions, or biases of the producers and, more indirectly, the intended readers or viewers of those documents. For example, we may examine political speeches to find what sorts of buzz words politicians of various stripes use: "freedom," "enterprise," "equality," "fairness," "opportunity," and so forth. We may examine network primetime television shows to find out how much oncamera time is given to men, to women, to the young, to the old, to whites, to blacks. In more complex research designs, we may search for features that are subtler than simple word uses or oncamera appearances for example, the appearance of themes such as equality of opportunity in political speeches, or the prevalence of violence on television shows.

Content analysis, then, is a way of passing that which seems purely subjective the intent and biases of the creators of documents under the objective lens of our analytical microscope. However, the objectivity of the result of a contentanalysis study depends in large measure on the degree to which the documents we look at, and the materials within those documents, accurately mirror the univer

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very available at all. Yet these "narrowcasted" speeches might be of particular interest, since they are not necessarily simple repetitions of a standard stump speech, but may be tailored in part to a particular audience (seniors, farmers, minorities, contributors, etc.). Moreover, the presidential nominees' speeches are only a small fraction of all partisan political rhetoric. Primaryseason speeches may contain a different rhetoric, aimed at rallying party supporters to vote for one of several candidates for the nomination. Candidates for the Senate, the House, governorships and state legislative offices, all make their own contributions to the collective language of the Democratic and Republican parties. Even speeches by candidates for offices which are theoretically nonpartisan must be considered. For example, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is nominally a nonpartisan body. But the political press, and politically active citizens in general, all understand perfectly well that some Supervisors are Republicans and others are Democrats and, indeed, the Supervisors tend to be leading figures in each party. Thus, the number of individual elements (speeches, in this case) of partisan rhetoric

Category: Psychology - S