Some Possibilities for Current Undergraduate Action Research Teaching

With the exception of offering some specialized programs for small groups of undergraduates, which we describe later, we think the main focus of AR under­graduate teaching should be to provide an initial understanding of what AR is, its goals, its history in the larger context of social knowledge production, and an initial understanding of

Ph.D. Training in Action Research

In our view, the most promising educational arena for AR is found in Ph.D. training. The students are more mature, can focus their attention on a partic­ular set of interests, and the Ph.D. program is of sufficient duration for major change projects to be possible. This creates a situation in which the students can

Situating Action Research Within the University

Teaching is one but not the only way of situating AR within the university. Universities are structured to suit the convenience of those who earn their livings there and who manage them. Having an array of separate departments, each putatively encompassing a discipline with no ambiguity at the borders, as if the disciplines had

Participation and Action Research

Because participation is often treated too generally, it is worthwhile both to differentiate and contextualize the concept in ways that can help action researchers triangulate the overall direction of their projects. Participation can be viewed from different perspectives. We have chosen three: the first is built on power and control, the second framed in

Democratization and Action Research

If understanding the diverse meanings of participation is complex, the concept of democratization offers even more challenges because its referents are even broader. This is a term that refers to structures, processes, governments, decision making, and moral goals, and no short treatment will do it justice. Despite the importance action researchers ascribe to it,

Venues for Participation and Democratization in Action Research

To this point, we have talked about participation and democratization in a fairly abstract way. Another strategy is to think contextually about the condi­tions of possibility that we find in the situations we work in. Conditions for participation and democratization differ in manufacturing, process, and ser­vice industries, and these conditions differ from those in

A Definition of Content Analysis

In content analysis, evaluators classify the key ideas in a written communication, such as a report, article, or film. Evaluators can do content analysis of video, film, and other forms of recorded information, but in this paper, we focus on analyzing words. Here is a formal definition of content analysis: it is a systematic

The Uses of Content Analysis

Here are several ways in which GAO evaluators have successfully used content analysis techniques. In Stars and Stripes: Inherent Conflicts Lead to Allegations of Military Censorship (GAO, 1988), GAO evaluators used content analysis to help assess issues of censorship, news management, and other influences on various editions of the military newspaper. Details of technique

Computerized Content Analysis

The increasing availability of written information on computer files, and the increasing number of computer programs to analyze text files, makes content analysis easier to do than ever before. Moreover, computerized programs can easily code textual data and combine them with quantitative data. The evaluator can then analyze both kinds of data with various

Some Advantages of Content Analysis

1. It Can Be Unobtrusive One problem with surveys and some experimental methods is that evaluators and their informants can interact during data collection in ways other than how they would “naturally” react. For example, a content analysis of the hearing transcripts might be more useful than interviews with federal officials about what took

Some Disadvantages of Content Analysis

Because content analysis is systematic, sufficient human resources must be committed to it and rigorously applied to it. This may mean, for some evaluation applications, that the benefits may not outweigh the cost of the resources. Moreover, while content analysis has safeguards against distortion of the evidence, evaluators must use judgment in coding the

How to Apply Content Analysis

GAO evaluators can use content analysis to articulate a program’s objectives, describe its activities, and determine its results. 1. Program Objectives Many evaluations characterize a program’s objectives. For example, evaluators might compare a program’s legislative objectives with those of the executive branch. To do this, they might gather written or tape-recorded information from the

Assignment Objectives of Content Analysis

GAO often expresses an assignment’s objectives in the form of three broad categories of evaluation question: descriptive, normative, or impact questions. (GAO, 1991c) In theory, content analysis can address all three categories. In practice, descriptive and normative questions are especially amenable to content analysis; program impact questions are less commonly answered through content analysis.

Data Available or to Be Collected for Content Analysis

Whether or not content analysis is appropriate depends on the nature of the information to be evaluated. The information can be anything written: an original document; a transcript of a speech, conversation, discussion, or oral answer to a question; or a verbal description of visual information, such as a film, video, or photograph. Documents

Kinds of Data Required for Content Analysis

In the early stages of an assignment, evaluators choose variables of interest. For the descriptive Stars and Stripes assignment, for example, important variables included the frequency of stories on selected issues, such as the Iran-contra affair and the presidential campaign; the percentage of stories from other sources, such as staff reporters, AP, UPI, and

Kinds of Analysis Required in Content Analysis

Considering data requirements goes hand in hand with analysis requirements. In many evaluations, the most important, or only, form of analysis may be a simple aggregation of quantitative data or a comparison of categorical variables. When the subject matter is textual and the evaluation questions lend themselves to numerical descriptions or comparisons, content analysis

Resources Needed in Content Analysis

In content analysis, evaluators must consider three principal types of resources: an analyst with the technical knowledge and experience to plan and direct the content analysis, personnel to do the coding, and computer capability to carry out the analysis. At least one member of the project team should know about content analysis and have

Defining the Variables in Content Analysis

The assignment’s evaluation questions lead directly to the relevant variables. In the Stars and Stripes example, we asked “To what extent does the content of news stories in Stars and Stripes indicate management or censorship of the news management?” In practice, however, defining a variable may be separated into two parts: conceptualizing the variable

Selecting Material for Analysis in Content Analysis

To select textual material to include in the content analysis, evaluators may find it easiest to think first about a population of documents. For some assignments, this population may already exist, as in the Stars and Stripes evaluation. For other assignments, evaluators have to collect data into a database. This happened when GAO evaluators

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Defining the Recording Unit for Content Analysis

Once evaluators have defined the variables and selected the textual material, their next major task is to define the recording units. A recording unit is the portion of text to which evaluators apply a category label. For example, the Stars and Stripes news story was the focus of analysis in that the evaluation objective