Blackwell Reference Online

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Like quantitative content analysis, qualitative content analysis is an empirical method of social sciences for analyzing live or recorded human communication such as →  Newspaper articles, protocols of →  television news or programs, transcripts of →  interviews , or protocols from →  observations (→  Content Analysis, Quantitative ). This written or transcribed material is called text material in this context (→  Text and Intertextuality ). From a general perspective, there are two main differences between quantitative and qualitative content analysis. First, quantitative content analysis works deductively and measures quantitatively. In this respect, quantitative content analysis decomposes the text material into different parts and assigns numeric codes to these elements or parts. Of course, such parts are not just words, but are rather issues, statements, arguments, or bundles of →  meaning. By contrast, however, qualitative content analysis works inductively by summarizing and classifying elements or parts of the text material and assigning labels or categories to them. In this respect, qualitative content analysis searches rather for “coherent” meaning structures in the text material. Second, quantitative content analysis can deal with a large quantity of text material. Qualitative content analysis, on the other hand, is limited to a few pieces of text material – whether ... log in or subscribe to read full text