I want to compare an old manuscript on sustainability to something more modern. Does anyone have any suggestions on using content analysis for doing this, as both documents are very long.
Pete, I don't know exactly you want to compare. We have a paper on content analysis might give you some idea.
Article Evaluating the evolution of forest restoration research in a...
Songlin,
Thank you. My interest was more on forest planning, but your work will be of great value.
Pete, the best commercial software for content analysis is, to my knowledge, NVivo. Some open source software has been developed as well (QDA Miner Lite), however I can't tell how good they are.
Dear Pete,
I would suggest looking for key words, phrases, or themes that are indicative of goals, methods, and outcomes. This may allow you to develop coding criteria that may be useful in your comparison.
Everyone,
Thank you for your responses. These gave me some very nice ideas to pursue.
Pete
OF course. This is one of the places that the technique 'cut its teeth' on determining authorship of the Federalist papers. the researchers compared the writings of Madison, Jay and Hamilton (if memory serves correctly) to the Federalist pamphlets (papers) to determine the patters and hence the proper authors of the 'unknown'/quasi attributed papers. I would suggest as a good starting point you look at the wonderful Sage Quantative Phamplet on Content Analysis and of course read Krippendorf himself.
1. Krippendorff K. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; 1980.
I'd also suggest another approach... that is using Latent Semantic Analysis and a tool called Leximancer. My Phd Students and many co-researchers use it a great deal. I cn provide examples and a paper or two if you need later on. Check it out at www.leximancer.com
good luck and good researching...
Duane
Content analysis is an intresting research area but posses its own challenges. First, there must be a "text"before "context" and any good content analysist must always pay serious attention to text and context as these are the driving force that give meaning to content.I wish you good luck.
thank you for asking this as I am wanting to do content analysis on court opinions; this was very helpful
Check this class book
1. Krippendorff K. Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; 1980.
among other things it provides the lineage so you will see that your question relates. content Analysis was created to do EXACTLY WHAT YOU ask. It was used to finally solve the identify authorship of the Federalist papers previously unattributed.
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