Chapter 13: Multiple choice questions

Question 1
Quantitative content analysis is an approach that aims to:

a) Objectively and systematically measure the content of a text
b) Reach an interpretive understanding of social action
c) Engage in a critical dialogue about ethical issues in research
d) Provide a feminist alternative to ‘male-stream’ quantitative methods

Question 2

Which of the following could be subjected to a textual content analysis?

a) Interview transcripts
b) Newspaper articles
c) Song lyrics
d) All of the above

Question 3

Why did Warde sample food magazines from four different months in the year?
a) Because there weren’t enough food adverts in the first two magazines
b) To take into account any seasonal variation in the recipes included in the magazines
c) To find information from more than one form of mass media communication
d) Because he couldn’t decide which of the recipes were the most appetizing

Question 4

Which of the following is not an example of a ‘unit of analysis’?

a) Validity
b) significant actors
c) Words
d) subjects and themes

Question 5

Why might a researcher want to count the frequency of certain words in a text?

a) It increases the reliability of the coding measures
b) It is a good way of finding out about the journalist’s favourite words
c) Emotive words can be used excessively to provoke a moral panic
d) It shows which words are most common in the English language

Question 6

The purpose of a coding manual is to:

a) Provide a form onto which the data can be entered
b) Provide researchers with instructions about how to code the data
c) List all the categories that have been omitted from the schedule
d) Test researchers’ knowledge of statistics

Question 7

The data from each row in a coding schedule can be entered into a quantitative analysis computer program called:

a) Endnote
b) N-Vivo
c) Outlook
d) SPSS

Question 8

One of the potential pitfalls in devising a coding scheme is that:

a) It can be difficult to obtain a random sample of newspapers
b) You might run out of photocopier paper
c) The categories may not be mutually exclusive
d) The unit of analysis is too clearly defined

Question 9

Which of the following is not an advantage of content analysis?

a) It allows us to observe otherwise inaccessible populations at first hand
b) It is a transparent and easily replicable technique
c) It allows us to track changes in media representations over time
d) It is a non-reactive method

Question 10

If coders differed in their interpretations of the categories in the schedule, this could negatively affect the data’s:

a) Internal generalisability
b) Intra-interviewer reliability
c) Construct validity
d) Inter-coder reliability