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Psychology A HELP!!

hello could someone please explain to me in simple terms the process of content analysis pleaseeeeeee the exams is in a few days !!! :smile:

Reply 1

Aleisha1

Hey
Dont Panic !!! content analysis is easy when you get your head around it.

It is where the researcher goes through the data collected and counts the number of times a behaviour of interest is mentioned. The data then becomes more quantitative as the researcher can present this in a numerical way.

An example exam question would be :

A psychologist carried out a field experiment to investigate the accuracy of eyewitness
testimony. The participants were pupils and parents attending a school concert. Just before
the concert began, two professional actors had an argument on the stage. During theargument, one actor pushed the other actor. Both actors then left the stage. Some of the
audience were approached as they left the concert and were asked to take part in an
experiment. Those who agreed were taken to a quiet room and were asked some questions
about the argument. For some participants, the questions included, “Did you see the man in
glasses push the other man?” In fact, neither man was wearing glasses.
The participants were then asked to describe the argument in their own words.

the question could then be

a) identify a suitable behaviuoral category for this experiment
Answer: An example could be shouting

b) explain how content analysis could be applied to this situation.
Answer: The psychologist would go through each participants description of the argument looking for examples of shouting being mentioned. the number in each category would then be counted.

One main problem with content analysis is validity. It is vital that the classification procedure is reliable in the sense of being consistent.
Also the practice of constructing a category system involves the risk of an investigator imposing his or her meaning-system on the data rather than 'taking' it from the content (investigator Bias- deal with this by using lots of different investigators to negotiate categories and quantifying features present within a given text)

I hope this helps alittle and good luck for your exam :smile:

P.S dont panic!!