Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
documents to test for internal consistency. They attempt to discover patterns
within the text and seek key events recorded and memorialized in words.
Content analysis is a methodology used to analyze written texts such as news-
papers, magazines, e-mail, reports, books, and Web sites. Quantitative
approaches usually involve literally measuring the length of a news column (as
compared with other columns in the same paper), counting the number of
words in a text to signify its relative importance, counting the frequency of a
term or phrase in a text, and/or recording how much time is devoted to a topic
on the radio or television. Qualitative approaches focus on the intentionality or
symbolic significance of key terms, phrases, and financial figures. This
requires coding the data and interpreting the patterns that emerge within the
context of the cultural setting. The assumption underlying content analysis is
that the frequency (or lack thereof) of a term or topic reflects its relative impor-
tance to the group or culture. (See Graneheim & Lundman, 2004; Krippendorff,
2004, p. 87; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998; Neuendorf, 2002; Roberts,
1997; Stemler, 2001; & Titscher, 2000, p. 224.)
The dropout program study produced volumes of written records to review:
teaching and counseling manuals, administrative guides, research reports,
newspaper articles, magazine articles, and hundreds of memoranda. Internal
documents received special scrutiny to determine whether they were internally
consistent with program philosophy. The review revealed significant patterns.
For example, the role of religion in these programs was evident. The literature
contained testimonial statements that the program owed its success to the
“direct involvement of religious leaders.” Lease agreements often specified a
church in which to house the program. Letters from the organization's leader,
himself a minister, were written in pastoral tones.
Similarly, the program philosophy was easy to detect after a study of the
program's public documents in conjunction with daily observation. The pro-
gram espoused a self-help, middle-class approach to life with a flavor of the
Puritan ethic. Program pamphlets contained routine references to “the work
ethic,” “individual responsibility for success,” “marketable skills,” and
enabling the disenfranchised to “claim their fair share of the [economic] pie.”
In numerous instances, I recorded certain words and phrases to determine their
frequency in the text. I often inferred the significance of a concept from its fre-
quency and context. The program's magazine articles, editorials, and memo-
randa documented key events such as civil rights legislation, reverse
discrimination court cases, racial incidents, and local ethnic events. The orga-
nization's official position on these events told much about its politics and fun-
damental values.
The ethnographer can analyze data culled from electronic media in precisely
the same fashion as he or she can analyze written documentation. Because this
