Reliability in content analysis

There are several issues to be addressed in considering the reliability of texts and their content analysis,
indeed, in analysing qualitative data using a variety of means, for example:

- Witting and unwitting evidence (Robson 1993: 273): witting evidence is that which was intended to be
imparted; unwitting evidence is that which can be inferred from the text, and
which may not be intended by the imparter.
- The text may not have been written with the researcher in mind and may have been written for a very
different purpose from that of the research (a common matter in documentary research); hence the
researcher will need to know or be able to infer the intentions of the text.
- The documents may be limited, selective, partial, biased, non-neutral and incomplete because they
were intended for a different purpose other than that of research (an issue of validity as well as of
reliability).

At a wider level, the limits of content analysis are suggested by Ezzy (2002: 84), who argues that, due to
the pre-ordinate nature of coding and categorizing, content analysis is useful for testing or confirming a
pre-existing theory rather than for building a new one, though this perhaps understates the ways in
which content analysis can be used to generate new theory, not least through a grounded theory
approach

Grounded theory

Theory generation in qualitative data can be emergent, and grounded theory is an important method of
theory generation. It is more inductive than content analysis, as the theories emerge from, rather than
exist before, the data. Strauss and Corbin (1994: 273)

Remarked that ‘grounded theory is a general methodology for developing theory that is grounded in
data systematically gathered and analysed’.

Glaser (1996) suggests that ‘grounded theory is the systematic generation of a theory from data’; it is an
inductive process in which everything is integrated and in which data pattern themselves rather than
having the researcher pattern them, as actions are integrated and interrelated with other actions. Glaser
and Strauss’s (1967) seminal work rejects simple linear causality and the decontextualization of data,
and argues that the world which participants inhabit is multivalent, multivariate and connected. As
Glaser (1996) says, ‘the world doesn’t occur in a vacuum’ and the researcher has to take account of the
interconnectedness of actions. In everyday life, actions are interconnected and people make
connections naturally; it is part of everyday living, and hence grounded theory catches the naturalistic
element of research and formulates it into a systematic methodology. Like theoretical sampling, coding
constant comparison, the identification of a core variable, and saturation.

Theoretical sampling
In theoretical sampling, data collection continues until sufficient data have been gathered to create a
theoretical explanation of what is happening and what constitutes its key features. It is not a question of
representativeness, but, rather, a question of allowing the theory to emerge.

Constant comparison

The application of open, axial and selective coding adopts the method of constant comparison.

Developing grounded theory

As a consequence of theoretical sampling, coding, constant comparison, the identification of the core
variable, and the saturation of data, categories and codes, the grounded theory (of whatever is being
theorized) emerges from the data in an unforced manner, accounting for all of the data. How adequate
the derived theory is can be evaluated against several criteria. Glaser and Strauss (1967: 237) suggest
four main criteria: