Notes from Nicole for:
Ch. 1 "Content Analysis: What Texts Talk About"
Author Thomas Huckin
University of Utah
Main claim(s) or research questions:
-Huckin defines content analysis and how it can be performed. He begins by detailing the background of content analysis noting that it has recently become “virtually” synonymous with discourse analysis. However, Huckin concedes that discourse analysis is more “sophisticated” and made up of a variety of approaches. Nonetheless, content analysis is still utilized as support for discourse analysis.
-Huckin provides examples of studies that utilize the quantitative and qualitative approaches separately, as well as, combined. These studies provide a “tangible” example of how important the research approach is to the results and purpose of the research.
-Huckin argues that Compositionists typically utilize both quantitative and qualitative data in their research.
-In closing Huckin addresses the criticism of performing content analysis and counters by providing the benefits of such analysis.
Methods and Methodology:
-Huckin provides 6 (recursive) steps for conducting content analysis research.
Keywords/ Phrases/ Concepts:
-Content analysis: identifying, quantifying, and analyzing of specific words, phrases, concepts, or other observable semantic data in a text or body of texts with the aim of uncovering some underlying thematic or rhetorical pattern running through these texts (14).
-Conceptual analysis: a concept is selected, coded, and counted for its presence in a text or corpus (set of texts) (14).
-Relational analysis: the process goes one step further (than conceptual analysis) by identifying a number of concepts and then examining the relationships among them (14).
-Quantitative approach: (“objective”) a textual analysis that utilizes the this approach would only take into account the words, phrases, or other linguistic tokens that belong to a predetermined list and thus can be tabulated reliably by a computer. In other words, this kind of research analysis DOES NOT include implicit meanings but rather looks at numbers of occurrences (15).
-Qualitative approach: (“impressionistic”) focuses on both explicit and implicit concepts in texts. This too requires gathering textual data but allows for implied meanings to be included (15).
*Methodological Procedure:
-Deductive: To start research with a proposition that will be confirmed or disconfirmed through the research (16).
-Inductive: No proposition is established at the onset and instead research is used for exploration and/or is flexible with the findings(16).
Key texts cited:
-Although several sources were used to illustrate key areas for Huckins, when outlining how to begin research he prevailed on Mary MacNealy’s Strategies for Empirical Research in Writing. Boston: Allyin & Bacon. (1999).
Questions/ Challenges:
-In the closing section in which Huckin defends content analysis his last “virtue” is, “Content analysis yields information no less valuable than that provided by other methods, and does so with greater objectivity” (28). He continues by citing Sari Thomas and suggests her argument, that making the bases for sampling and analytic choices public then makes that analysis “objective,” is viable. I, however, am not entirely convinced that “objective” is used responsibly here. Thomas argues (and presumably Huckin agrees) that all research requires analysis and thus is as vulnerable to subjectivity of the researcher. I also believe this to be true. So then I pose the question: do we, as researchers, deserve to claim a study as “objective?” Or rather should objectivity be privileged? Is it not better to recognize analysis is done with subjectivity and attend to that subjectivity as explicitly as possible?
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Good question. I marked that place, too, when I read the text. The implication here is that the claims made through content analysis are based on "observable data" (29). Huckin is citing Thomas who argues that this method asks the researcher to justify and state the "sampling and analytic choices" (Thomas qtd in Hickin 29). As I read that, I tried to test that claim out against other kinds of textual analysis, and I think what is being stated here is that the researcher is "accountable" more than in other textual approaches. Therefore, he/she is more "objective." The challenge here in using a term like "objective" is it attaches itself to the idea of scientific validity and the experimental method. I agree that we should question this claim as it doesn't fully plumb the depths of the way that observable data is based on interpretation.
ReplyDeleteI’m so sad! My comment got erased before I was done! Let me try to restate it: I appreciated your question about whether we as scholars should be forthcoming and attentive to how our research is subjective. It reminds me of when students ignore their opposition’s counter arguments, assuming that such acknowledgments weaken their claims rather than strengthen their ethos as knowledgeable, reasonable, and fair writers. I’m confident that folks in comp/rhet might be willing to accept that subjective data is still valid and it still speaks to larger populations and issues. I wonder, however, how we might acknowledge our data as being subjective and still frame our evidence so that it is persuasive to larger audiences in other disciplinary discourse communities.
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