NURS 7445 - Content Analysis

This course explores content analysis as a method of data reduction and analysis that lends itself to integration into both textual and statistical study designs. Content analysis is an often misunderstood and underdeveloped method of analysis despite the fact that it offers significant utility to many research questions and area of inquiry and is often cited as a central method in nursing research. In this course, students will learn the basic premises and assumptions that support various techniques of content analysis as these describe, in both statistical (quantitative) and textual (qualitative) forms, the manifest and latent content and structure of textual data. Students will explore how content analysis can be applied to various forms of data including large corpus, media, archival, interview, focus group data and written survey responses, and how these methods can inform further statistical and textual analyses. Specifically, students will develop their understanding of how content analysis techniques can be used to address their own research questions and will articulate a rationale for including content analysis in their own data analysis plan.