POL 2101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Content Analysis

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POL 2101
• Professor: Andre Lecours

Document Summary

Chapter 9: unobtrusive research: methods of studying social behaviour without affecting it, this includes analysis of existing statistics, content analysis, and historical and comparative research. A variety of governmental and nongovernmental agencies provide aggregate statistical data for studying aspects of social life. Problems of validity in the analysis of existing statistics can often be handled through logical reasoning and replication. Existing statistics often have problems of reliability, so they must be used with caution. Content analysis is a social research method appropriate for studying human communications through social artifacts: researchers can use it to study not only communication processes, but other aspects of social behaviour as well. Common units of analysis in content analysis include elements of communication: words, paragraphs, books, and so forth: standard probability sampling techniques are sometimes appropriate in content analysis.