Certain aspects of ensuring the results validity of the content analysis as a social discourse research method
Content analysis today is one of the leading research methods at the intersection of history, sociology, cultural and other sciences. As a method, content analysis is not only a set of common principles for texts analysis, but also a set of tools for it. With the intent to prevent possible errors while using and improving the research performance, the author tried to present content analysis as a leading method of information gathering and to offer the description of its semantic characteristics of identifying errors that are quite common in works that use this technique in sociological research. Standardized, formalized methods of analysis have emerged as alternative informal methods. Content analysis as a valuable method of sociological research as it is able to reveal both explicit and implicit content information.
Therefore, we can conclude that the systematic, objective and quantitative conditions and principles are not the only conditions and principles of content analysis. If compare it to other research methods, content analysis has some special features of the procedural peculiarity – that is a careful count of the total number and incidence of certain units. Quantitative parameters (context unit and unit count) obtained in the study reveal quality content of analyzed document. The use of qualitative components in the content analysis and its modification will give the ability to solve new, more complex tasks, to expand the problematic field of research, and to obtain more accurate conclusions about the nature of the phenomena studied.
Content analysis as one of the oldest research methods is still relevant today. It is a dynamic environment in interdisciplinary research and it diversifies due to developments in various fields of data analysis that require special attention of scientists to refine procedures for the content analysis implementation in order to obtain the most accurate data.
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