University of Applied Sciences, Fulda

Part Two: Qualitative Approach

In the 1950s a controversy was already developing about research strategies in content analysis. Berelsen (1952) was the first to put together the methods and goals of quantitative content analysis which had been developed up to that time, and these concentrated assessment on the basis of frequency analyses. It was time to go much deeper into the context of the data and its construction rather than frequency with which something is repeated. The tendency towards research was aimed to demonstrate the ‘patterns’ and ‘wholes’ in texts, not by counting and measuring their manifest contents, but by showing the different
possibilities of interpretation of the interconnected network of connotations and meanings. For Kracauer, categories are also of central importance: “What counts alone in quantitative analysis is the selection and rational organisation of such categories as condensed substantive meanings of the given text, with a view to testing pertinent assumptions and hypotheses” (Kracauer 1952:p.637).
In the 1960s, a new approach to carrying out research in the field of social sciences was introduced, and this changed the approach to data collecting as well as data analysis. The new approach focused more on the qualitative handling of the data, in contrast to the quantitative approach, which had been dominant since the 1920s.
One significant feature in this mode of inquiry, according to Quinn Patton, is the “emphasis on inductive strategies of theory development in contrast to theory generated by logical deduction from a priori assumptions” (1990:66). This was a reaction to behaviouristic-quantitative approaches, which were used in the social sciences for measuring accountable as well as unaccountable phenomena, such as human feelings of pain, happiness, et cetera, in the social sciences.
This theory-method linkage is of great importance. With other research methods, the researcher actually tests the extent of the correctness or probability of the theory which s/he agrees with. The methods of research and the way the data is collected are all strongly influenced even before the research starts.
More recently, in text analysis, Mayring’s (1988) qualitative content analysis has achieved popularity. Titscher provides an overview of Mayring's analytical procedures:
Mayring has developed a sequential model and proposes, as far as goals are concerned, three distinct analytical procedures, which may becarried out either independently or in combination, depending upon the