ARCHIVAL RESEARCH,

CONTENT ANALYSIS, &

META-ANALYSIS
Research Methods
Archival Research
 Studying existing records
 E.g., US Census Bureau, police reports
 Developing clear questions or hypotheses
 Issues
 Gaining access
 Completeness of records
 Selection of records
Content Analysis
 Content Analysis
 Analyze spoken or written record
 Sampling
 Which materials to use?
 Units of analysis
 Recording unit
 Content unit
 Clear operational definitions
 Multiple coders (to assess reliability)
 Reduce bias issues
Example
 Adkins, Covert, & Wasburn (2007) examined the
extent of media bias in Time and Newsweek
coverage of domestic social issues from 1975
through 2000. The authors coded 873 articles.

 Selection of article topics?

 What is liberal? What is conservative?
 Inter-rater reliability?
Example
 Kramer and Winter (2008) interested in impression
management among users of StudiVZ. Researchers randomly
sent 150 members an invitation to complete their study. Fifty-
eight participants answered questions about their extraversion
levels, self-esteem, efficacy of self-presentation. Two
researchers coded participants’ user profile page (e.g.,
number of photos, friends, relationship status, style of text,
style of profile photo, etc.).
 What type of study is this?
 What are the variables of interest?
 How could reliability be assessed?
 Do we need to be concerned about response rate?
Meta-Analysis
 Statistical procedure combining data from multiple
studies
 Systematic, quantitatively combines data in order to
provide information about effect sizes
 Steps
 Identify studies
 File drawer phenomenon
 Determine eligibility of studies
 Get the data from these studies
 Statistically analyze the data
Example
 Mini-Review
1. In what ways are a content analysis and
observational research similar?
2. Compare and contrast meta-analysis to literature
reviews.
3. Provide an example of a content analysis.