Research strategy and approach

Exploratory research can be also defined as content-driven, inductive approach. Instead of testing a hypothesis, it aims at providing an answer to the research questions. The vari-ables and analytic categories are not predetermined, but derive from the data generated during the research. (Guest et al. 2012, 7.)

The research strategy for this study was mixed-method content analysis. Mixed methods in the research strategy means that both qualitative and quantitative research methods are applied in research design. The benefits of mixed methods is that it allows to combine what is generally considered as qualitative data –“words, pictures, and narratives” with quantitative numerical data (Hese-Biber 2010, 3).

Inductive reasoning was used for the document analysis that was carried out at the first phase of the research in order to design the research matrix; deductive reasoning as a part of summative content analysis was used at the second stage of the study.

24 3.2.1 Documents as subjects of study

Document analysis is one of the common methods of data collection and a mode of analy-sis at the same time (O’Leary 2004, 177). O’Leary (2004, 10) suggests that it is possible to explore written documents in two ways: for content or for themes. The author suggests two ways of collecting data from documents:

• The interview. It suggests that the researcher is treating each document as a re-spondent that provides answers to an inquiry.

• Noting occurrences. This is a quantitative technique that focuses on counting the occurrences of particular words, phrases, and concepts within a given document. This technique is also can be referred to as content analysis. (O’Leary 2004, 180.)

Further on, O’Leary (2004, 199) refers to content analysis as a strategy to analyze data, and she also separates two types of procedures: linguistic quantifications of words as units of analysis or thematic analysis through coding. However, O’Leary (2004) only con-siders content of documents as resource of research evidence.

With the objective to prove that documentation analysis is widely underestimated, Prior (2008) analyzed different approaches to document analysis that had been used for social research.

The researcher argued, that despite of the common opinions among the acknowledged scholars (Hodder 2000; Bryman 2004; Lee 2000; May 1997), documents shall not be studied just for their content and in isolation from the context that they were produced in.

On the contrary, the author refers to the previous studies of Scott (1990), where he con-cluded that documents shall only serve as social scientific evidence, and it is documents’

authenticity, credibility, comparability with similar documents, and the meaning of the doc-ument’s content that shall be the focus of the study. (Prior 2008, 822.)

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Table 2. Approaches to study of documents (Prior 2008, 825)

Prior (2008, 825) summarizes the ways in which documents have been used in studies carried out by sociologists as illustrated in Table 2. Mostly, the researches focus purely on the content of the document (Cell 1 in Table 2), and use content analysis, thematic analy-sis or grounded theory to study them. The focus remains on the content of the documents when researchers use the approaches from the Cell 2. The differences between the ap-proaches is that “archeological” apap-proaches focus on studying whether the content of a document had come true, and in the majority of cases, discourse analysis is used for that purpose.

A different perspective is used when the approaches presented in Cells 3 and 4. The ap-proaches from Cell 3 interpret how the documents are being used by different groups of users. The approaches described in Cell 4, on the contrary, focus on the effects that docu-ments may have on the users, which role the docudocu-ments have in society. (Prior 2008, 825-826.)

3.2.2 Content analysis and summative content analysis

The earlier definitions of content analysis given by Berelson (1952, 18, in Krippendorff 2004, 19) and Laswell (1949, in Krippendorff 1989, 403) restrict content analysis to quanti-tative description of the content by empathizing the quantification of occurrences in ques-tion in the studied informaques-tion source. Neuendorf (2002, 1) also defines content analysis as a quantitative, objective and systematic analysis of message characteristics, thus limit-ing it to fit under the quantitative methodology.

However, Krippendorff (2004, 16) himself argues that content analysis has recently evolved, and nowadays includes a variety of research approaches that are often referred to as qualitative approaches. Zhang and Wildemuth (2009, 318) also say that content analysis had been primarily used as a quantitative technique until recent decades, but

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nowadays qualitative content analysis is used in many studies. Query et al. (in Frey &

Cissna 2009, 89) likewise see content analysis in both quantitative and qualitative form.

Qualitative method in content analysis emphasizes a contextual view at the body of re-search and goes beyond merely counting words of extracting objective content, but allows researcher “to understand social reality in a subjective but scientific manner” (Zhang &

Wildemuth 2009, 319).

The difference between quantitative and qualitative approaches is that qualitative ap-proach allows taking into account not only the content that is being studied, but also the context including the purpose of the document and other background information. Hence there is a difference in sampling techniques – since qualitative analysis by definition can be easily taken out of the context, random sampling or other probabilistic approaches are required, while qualitative content analysis allows using purposively selected research materials. The objective of the qualitative content analysis is to explore the meaning and motivation behind the text/document, in contrast to quantitative content analysis that fo-cuses on counting recurrences of objects. Another important difference is that the result of the quantitative content analysis shall be numeric and context-free, and the outcome of the qualitative content analysis is expected to be presented in descriptions and typologies, interpreted within the context of the study. (Zhang and Wildemuth 2009, 319.)

In addition to conventional inductive content analysis that aims at condensing raw data into categories and themes, Hsieh and Shannon (2005, 1279) also define directed and summative types of content analysis. Directed approach implicates that initial coding cate-gories derive from theory or previous studies, but during the data analysis new catecate-gories or themes emerge from the data. Summative qualitative content analysis is a study that starts with identifying and counting contextual use of words or content as an attempt to ex-plore usage and is also known as manifest content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon 2005, 1283). However, the difference between quantitative and summative qualitative analysis is that the latter includes latent content analysis – an interpretation of content.