Research On Content Analysis In A Methodological View

As a method for empirical purpose with a quantity form, content analysis is a generalmethod for soft science. Although having a wide academic application in the west,content analysis still sees a limited use in China's academic fields. This paper is tointroduce content analysis in a methodology view and to better understand contentanalysis.The major research works of the paper are as follows:1) The history, academic writings, definition and advantage of content analysis2) The conceptual framework of content analysis, which consists of text, research questions, context, analysis construct, inferences and validating evidence. The conceptual framework uncovers the important concepts and their associations in a well-designed content analysis system.3) The content analysis designs, which represent the network of steps to conduct a specific content analysis. During the process of designing content analyses, there are information feedback and modification of the components.4) The analytical constructs of content analysis, which operationalize the analysits' knowledge of the context and model the texts' context of use.5 ) The computer-aided text analyses, which lists a variety of computer-aided contentanalysis software and cases. 6) The practical fields of content analysis, which include the media measurementand enterprise competitive intelligence.The conceptual framework is aimed to introduce the content analysis in the methodological view, which would help to better understand the content analysis and review the problems once have been ignored. The conceptual framework is based on a content analysis system, within which several factors are related to each other. And it is necessary to emphasize the specificity of each analysis. With the research problem as the aim, a content analysis is restricted by the context, represented by the analysis construct, and finally accomplished by the inferences. Then a content analysis expends the capacity of the analyst, who is able to infer the extra-characters of the texts.A content analysis is to find the extra-characters of the texts, which is definitely based on the context of the research problem. Contexts are fundamentals of content analysis. Without the context, a content analysis has no sense. In the contexts analyst conceived, not only the stable correlation but the contributing conditions as well relate the texts and research problem to a content analysis, while the latter is always ignored. The innovation of the paper is the methodological view, a more profound level to explain content analysis. Instead of introducing fixed steps, topics such as conceptual frameworks and content analysis designs may make more sense for academic use of content analysis. Critical interpreting of qualification and quantification in content analysis provides a sensible look of content analysis to avoid apply the method in a superfluous way. As to the computer-aided textual analysis, the introduction of the paper covers a relatively wide collection of software. At last the paper deals with practical use of content analysis in the fields of media measurement and enterprise competitive intelligence, which focuses the angle of information science.