THE USE OF CONTENT ANALYSIS FOR EXPLANATORY STUDIES

The focus of this paper is on possible ways of using content analysis of articles, newspapers, or other types of communication data for explanatory rather than merely descriptive purposes. Frequent comparisons are made with analyses of public opinion survey data to illustrate possibilities and methodological problems. This attention to higher-level ufses of content analysis is timely and important because of recent linguistic and technological developments. Robert E. Mitchell is a Research Sociologist with the Survey Research Center of the University of California at Berkeley, and has recently been on loan to the Chinese University of Hong Kong to establish and direct its Social Survey Research Centre.