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302 CHAPTER 11 Analyzing qualitative data

Table 11.1 Major Categories of Content
Category Subcategory Examples
Publications Books, journals, newspapers, brochures
Broadcasting TV programs, radio programs
Media content Websites News, web portals, organizational websites,
blogs
Others Films, music, photos

Text Notes from interviews, focus groups, or
observations or diaries or surveys, text posts on
social media
Audience content
Multimedia Video- or audio-recording of interviews, focus
groups, observations, or user studies, pictures or
video recordings posted on social media

you interview 10 mobile device users on their daily usage of the device, your interview
notes would be the data set that you are going to analyze. In other cases, the definition
of the data set may not be that straightforward and special consideration is needed
to select the appropriate content or messages that should be included in the data set.
Suppose you want to study the development of interpersonal trust among members of
an online community. The public messages that the community members leave on the
bulletin board may contain valuable information. The messages that the community
members exchange privately through applications such as Instant Messaging or email
would also be useful. In this case, you need to consider the scope of your data set:
Do you want to study the public messages only, the private messages only, or both?
The answer to this question depends on both your research question and the practical
issues of your study. If your research question is focused on the impact of the general
community atmosphere and the sense of community on trust development, you may
want to limit the data set to the public messages because they are the most relevant to
your research question. In some cases, you may have to stick to the public messages
because you have no access to the messages that are exchanged privately among the
community members. You may also restrict the data set to messages posted during a
specific time period. Overall, the scope of your data set may affect the key words or
categories that you are going to use during the content analysis.
Once a clear definition of the data set is specified, you should study the data
closely and remove any data that do not meet the criteria of the definition. In the on-
line community study example, if you decide to study the public messages posted in
2015, then all of the private messages and any public messages from earlier or later
years must be abandoned. If those messages remain in the data set and are analyzed,
the data set is polluted and the results may be biased or misleading.
Content analysis studies should also clearly define the population from which the
data set is drawn. This seems to be straightforward but many issues may be encountered