Content Analysis Guide (Online Settings)
Summary
The Guide to Content Analysis describes how to analyse data collected through online discussion forums. Online discussion forums are rich in data including information about why young people like a program or service, what issues they are confronting, how well they are coping, what coping strategies they are using, what has changed for them since participating in the online forum etc.
Further Details
The Guide to Content Analysis (Online Settings) contains 8 sections:
- Broad categories for content analysis
- Example indicators for each category
- Reviewing content
- Storing results
- Reliability testing
- Content analysis
- Frequency of content analysis
- Moderator training and ongoing maintenance of skills
Suggested Uses
The Guide to Content Analysis (online settings) provides instructions for analysing the rich data that is often available within user discussion forums relating to the effectiveness of a program.
You may wish to use the Evaluation Discussion Threads (online settings) tool to generate data where data in specific categories is limited or not typically provided by users.
Combining content analysis with other data collection tools will help increase the reliability of the data. For example, implementing a forum user survey to gauge participant satisfaction levels, types of user, time of use, etc or reviewing web statistics (number of site visits, user profiles, discussion threads most accessed etc) would provide additional data than could be collected by reviewing content alone.
Download User Guide