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Deciphering the Data: A Comparison of Computer and Traditional Coding in Content Analysis
Unformatted Document Text:  1 DECIPHERING THE DATA A Comparison Of Computer and Traditional Coding In Content Analysis INTRODUCTION Computers have played an important role in the advancement of content analysis as a methodological tool in the study of media messages. Especially if the project is limited to the manifest textual content, computers can cut hours of human coding and analyzing into seconds or minutes. The power of computers is that they can analyze mountains of data very quickly. Plus, as the technology has advanced, services such as Lexis-Nexis have made much more content available electronically which reduces the amount of time spent getting the content ready for analysis. So researchers are able to tackle projects with a larger data set and get results with fewer people in a much shorter turnaround time than traditional human coding. The time-saving characteristics of computers have become so popular Neuendorf said “it’s rare to find a text content analysis today that does not use computer analysis.” (Neuendorf, 2002, 125-126) Computers are at their best in content analysis if the study is limited to textual messages. But when the project involves more than just a word count, the computer programs become trickier to use. Researchers have to make hard decisions on finding ways to help the computer code and analyze the content relative to the project at hand. In most cases, there’s no way to know how the results would differ in a content analysis project between a computer-assisted program and more traditional human coding and analysis. The researchers usually only use either computers or human coders.

Authors: Conway, Mike.
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1
DECIPHERING THE DATA
A Comparison Of Computer and Traditional Coding
In Content Analysis
INTRODUCTION
Computers have played an important role in the advancement of content analysis
as a methodological tool in the study of media messages. Especially if the project is
limited to the manifest textual content, computers can cut hours of human coding and
analyzing into seconds or minutes. The power of computers is that they can analyze
mountains of data very quickly. Plus, as the technology has advanced, services such as
Lexis-Nexis have made much more content available electronically which reduces the
amount of time spent getting the content ready for analysis. So researchers are able to
tackle projects with a larger data set and get results with fewer people in a much shorter
turnaround time than traditional human coding. The time-saving characteristics of
computers have become so popular Neuendorf said “it’s rare to find a text content
analysis today that does not use computer analysis.” (Neuendorf, 2002, 125-126)
Computers are at their best in content analysis if the study is limited to textual
messages. But when the project involves more than just a word count, the computer
programs become trickier to use. Researchers have to make hard decisions on finding
ways to help the computer code and analyze the content relative to the project at hand.
In most cases, there’s no way to know how the results would differ in a content
analysis project between a computer-assisted program and more traditional human coding
and analysis. The researchers usually only use either computers or human coders.


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