Lessons from Peer Reviewing
1Sunday, November 11, 2012 by Jesse
From completing the peer review assignment, I learned a great deal about content analysis,
particularly its strengths, limitations, and effective methodological design. I
also feel much more comfortable in critically evaluating an article and
examining more deeply the research methods of a study. I hate to admit it, but
I usually just skipped through the methods sections when I have read social
science research articles in the past. I was intimidated by all the numbers,
and that did come up this time when at first I was evaluating the article. I
did not understand the formula the authors used for evaluating and presenting
the variations in media coverage between the different newspapers. I thought
there was something I was missing, even after reading up on content analysis
study design. Only after Professor
Grimes pointed out to me that the article must be clear and accessible enough
for those outside the very small community of researchers to understand, did I
realize that my inability to understand what the authors were talking about was
not necessarily my fault.
By going through the paper’s research methodology
step-by-step, I spotted deficiencies in the design, but I also learned what
goes into a successful content analysis project design. Also, the more
information you can give to the reader about your methodology will also diffuse
a lot of criticism regarding the validity of a project design. I also have much
greater respect and understanding for what goes into content analysis and more confident
of my ability to argue for and defend the validity of content analysis as a
valuable research method, even if such prominent research methods scholars like
Luker are dismissive of it.
I find the discussion surrounding content analysis in Luker and other methodological textbooks really disconcerting! I guess it's because my understanding of it, and use of it in the past, has been drastically different than how it's so frequently represented.
ReplyDeleteI come partially from a linguistics background, and content analysis is integral to so much of the research in the field. In linguistics research, should phonetic and phonological variances be studied (in relation to accents or various speech communities, for example), the speech is broken down into IPA segments and markings; it's a complicated method, and without a good textbook and some guidance it looks like jumbled nonsense. Once everything is transcribed, the researcher goes through to see patterns (for example, vowels are raised but only after a nasal consonant), and once these can be verified through repetition, the behaviour of the speech is effectively constructed. That's linguistic content analysis in a nutshell, and while I can certainly accept some criticisms (primarily the methods of obtaining the speech samples, and whether these tacitly influence the speech, especially in vocabulary studies), it seems so very steadfast and quantitative to me.
I agree that context goes far in diffusing criticism. Lay it all out on the table for the reader to understand, and the taken-for-granted becomes apparent; I think that's the pitfall of a lot of content analysis, at least from what I encountered in linguistics. While I can accept the validity of the analysis, the methods for obtaining the data need to be better scrutinized, and in order to do that, I need a good preface.