I am social scientist. I wonder how I can help you.

Hi, Danish. I am a social science researcher. How can I help you?

Lots of social scientists on this site. Is it about sample size?

Thank u friends. I am doing a research on 'Print Media Portrayal of Socio-Political issues in Kashmir'. It is a comparative study of Local (Kashmiri) and National (Indian) Newspapers between 1989 and 2010. I have classified the socio-political issues as follows:

Governance in Kashmir, which includes 1, Centre-state relations 2, National days 3, Forces’ presences and performance and 4, Elections

Social fallout of Political Issues, which includes 1. Violence 2, Strikes and 3, Mass Agitations.

I have chosen four newspapers, two local and two national, for the study, but I need help in sampling. All the variables I have chosen belong to different time periods within the chosen time frame.

I also need help in learning the better methods of doing textual analysis of the newspapers.

If I am not mistaken you are doing a content analysis. No need for including variables. As for sampling: I think it is not much helpful to select randomly news papers issues. You should consider all issues of these newspapers within a time frame. Instead, you can restrict the number of news papers or shorten the time frame.

Yes it is content analysis. Today's trend in research is mixed methods - quali and quanti ... u can try both.

you may count the occurrence of topics in order to measure attention to them but it is not strictly a quantitative method. Many colleagues and I call them rather statistical methods: those are methods which are large N and are based on statistics, regression or variance analyses. But as you also pointed to i: there is no strict "border" between the pure quantitative and pure qualitative methods.

you can also do a discourse analysis. Then in addition to, or instead of , counting the occurrence of topic you should analyze how it is talked about them over time. This type of research is not really positivist and has a fair degree of interpretative character!

I am indeed using a combined methodology, if i may call it so. I am doing the content analysis, which is to know the frequency of these issues in the newspapers, and I am combining it with textual analysis to understand the portrayal of the issues I am studying. I am stuck at the textual analysis part, because I am not sure what is the best way to do it. Am i only supposed to analyse the text and language used from my own point of view?

well for a discourse analysis -- it is what you are doing-- you should have criteria how you analyse certain topic. Yes it has an interpretative character but it is not always arbitrary.

You can also make a grounded theory design. This is a method in which you are exploring the topics and relations between them by codification of the text.

Danish Zargar : u can try using t application of ATLAS.IT or NVIVO for your text analysis.

Yes they are good programs for qualitative textual analyses

Jasmine Abdullah. Please tell me the website where from to download it

I need the name of the latest softwares to analyse for qualitative research and for quantitative research.

hey Masshooda,

pls have a look at

http://www.sosciso.de/en/software/datenanalyse/qualitativ/

there you will find most of the available QDA software. For quantitative tools you will find links to excellent overviews like:

http://statistiksoftware.com/free_software.html

http://www.sosciso.de/en/software/datenanalyse/qualitativ/

can I help?

Salam Shazia.

I am still unable to have a grip over textual analysis of print media content. Ur help will be more than appreciated

what is the topic and hypothesis , you need to be focused can you send me the topic and the hypothesis and then I can suggest you how to go about it, print media is vast and what exactly are you looking at.

Hi Danish

..textual analysis to understand the portrayal of the issues I am studying. I am stuck at the textual analysis part, because I am not sure what is the best way to do it. Am i only supposed to analyse the text and language used from my own point of view?........

"portrayal of issues" is your main concern. You can not do a valid study if you do not clearly provide research questions and questions within the questions. Namely, if you know clearly what you want, then you will have no problem in collecting data form any kind of source. My suggestion: ask yourself about what are the things that you want to know and specifically write them down before asking what kind of method of data collection and analysis you should use. Non one can help you correctly if you do not provide your research questions or hypotheses. I repeat: Do not think about how to do it before you clearly write down what to do.

take care

irfan

Yep social science here