On the following pages you will find 13 Facebook posts that were created by the Public Relations Society of America's Association/Nonprofit Section page. See if you can determine what kind of content interests readers of the Facebook feed the most.
Below are the steps in the content analysis process. Complete each, and upload your project to the dropbox when you are finished.
1. Formulating the research question or hypothesis. I am providing the research question for you.
RQ1: What type of content do readers of the Association/Nonprofit Section Facebook page view the most?
2. Defining the universe in question. Your universe is the 13 Facebook posts.
3. Selecting an appropriate sample from the population. For this lab assignment we will use a census of all posts this calendar year (the 13 posts).
4. Selecting and defining a unit of analysis. Your unit of analysis will be the post itself.
5. Constructing the categories of content to be analyzed. This is where you start to use your knowledge of communication to decide what to code. Come up with five items to code. In the Excel file that accompanies this lab you will find that I have already started coding two item - 1) number of views on each post and 2) does the post mention social media. You will need to come up with three more items to code. Some examples would be topic of the post, presence or absence of a picture, length of the post, or whatever you think makes sense to answer the research question.
6. Establishing a quantification system. This comes into play after you have constructed your categories. If you decide to code for topic of the post, you will need to determine the categories of posts. In the Excel file that accompanies this lab, you will see that I coded "Does the post mention social media" as 1=Yes and 2=No. You may use that quantification system for your other categories or you can branch out to something else.
7. Training coders and conducting a pilot study. If you were to conduct this on a broader scale, you would train coders to help with the coding, and you would run a pilot study.
8. Coding the content according to established definitions. Ok, now use the coding structure that you came up with and code the 13 posts. You will want to treat each post the same. Think of it like you are surveying each post. You will ask the same questions about each post. The rows indicate the post number and the columns are the measures or the questions you are asking.
9. Analyzing the collected data. We haven't covered the heavy data analysis yet (that is coming up in the next few weeks...jump for joy). So, use your best judgment to examine what patterns you see in the answers. Calculating averages or counting the number of posts that fall into each category is a good way to get started. For example, what percentage of posts talked about social media? And what is the average number of views on a post?
10. Calculate intercoder reliability. For this lab, I am not asking you to code with someone else, so you cannot calculate how similarly you coded. But for a full content analysis, you would want to have an 80% or greater reliability. The more often two coders give the same answer, the higher the reliability of the data.
11. Drawing conclusions and searching for indications. Don't spend too much time here. Just give me three observations (more if you want). What recommendations would you give the Association/Nonprofit section based on your research? Did certain types of posts get more views than others?
Attachment:- Lab Assignment.rar