Page 274 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 12: Content Analysis

Using an existing coding frame Notes
You don’t always need to create a coding frame from scratch. If you know that somebody has done
the same type of content analysis as you are doing, there are several advantages to using an existing
coding frame. It not only saves all the time it takes to develop a coding frame, but also will enable
you to compare your own results with those of the earlier study.
Even if your study has a slightly different focus, you can begin with an existing coding frame and
modify it to suit your focus. If you’d like a coding frame for news and current affairs topics, feel free
to use (or adapt) my one above. Government census bureaus use standard coding frames, particularly
for economic data - such as ISCO: the International Standard Classification of Occupations. Other
specialized coding frames can be found on the Web. For example, CAMEO and KEDS/TABARI are
used for coding conflict in news bulletins.

The importance of consistency in coding

When you are coding verbatim responses, you’re always making borderline decisions. “Should this
answer be category 31 or 73?” To maintain consistency, I suggest taking these steps:
Have a detailed list showing each code and the reasons for choosing it. When you update it, make
sure that each coder gets a copy of the new version.
Use the minimum number of people to do the coding. The consistency is greatest if one person does
it all. Next best is to have two people, working in the same room.
Keep a record of each borderline decision, and the reasons why you decided a particular category
was the most appropriate.
Have each coder re-code some of each other coder’s work. A 10% sample is usually enough, but if
this uncovers a lot of inconsistency, re-code some more.
If you have created a coding frame based on a small sample of the units, you often find some
exceptions after coding more of the content. At that point, you may realize your coding frame wasn’t
detailed enough to cover all the units. So what do you do now?
Usually, you add some new codes, then go back and review all the units you’ve coded already, to
see if they include the new codes. So it helps if you have already noted the unit numbers of any
units where the first set of codes didn’t exactly apply. You can then go straight back to those units
(if you’re storing them in numerical order) and review the codes. A good time to do this review is
when you’ve coded about a quarter of the total units, or about 200 units - whichever is less. After
200-odd units, new codes rarely need to be added. It’s usually safe to code most late exceptions as
“other” - apart from any important new concepts.
This works best if all the content is mixed up before you begin the coding. For example, if you are
comparing news content from two TV stations, and if your initial coding frame is based only on one
channel, you may have to add a lot of new categories when you start coding items from the second
channel. For that reason, the initial sample you use to create the coding frame should include units
of as many different types as possible. Alternatively, you could sort all the content units into random
order before coding, but that would make it much harder for the coders to see patterns in the original
order of the data.

Questioning the content
When analysing media content (even in a visual form - such as a TV program) it’s possible to skip
the transcription, and go straight to coding. This is done by describing the visual aspects in a way
that’s relevant to the purpose of the analysis.

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