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Methodology

• Content Analysis | Guide, Methods & Examples

Content Analysis | Guide, Methods & Examples

Published on July 18, 2019 by Amy Luo . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Content analysis is a research method used to identify patterns in recorded communication. To conduct content analysis, you systematically collect data from a set of texts, which can be written, oral, or visual:

• Books, newspapers and magazines
• Speeches and interviews
• Web content and social media posts
• Photographs and films

Content analysis can be both quantitative (focused on counting and measuring) and qualitative (focused on interpreting and understanding).  In both types, you categorize or “code” words, themes, and concepts within the texts and then analyze the results.

Table of contents

What is content analysis used for, advantages of content analysis, disadvantages of content analysis, how to conduct content analysis, other interesting articles.

Researchers use content analysis to find out about the purposes, messages, and effects of communication content. They can also make inferences about the producers and audience of the texts they analyze.

Content analysis can be used to quantify the occurrence of certain words, phrases, subjects or concepts in a set of historical or contemporary texts.

Quantitative content analysis example

To research the importance of employment issues in political campaigns, you could analyze campaign speeches for the frequency of terms such as unemployment , jobs , and work  and use statistical analysis to find differences over time or between candidates.

In addition, content analysis can be used to make qualitative inferences by analyzing the meaning and semantic relationship of words and concepts.

Qualitative content analysis example

To gain a more qualitative understanding of employment issues in political campaigns, you could locate the word unemployment in speeches, identify what other words or phrases appear next to it (such as economy,   inequality or  laziness ), and analyze the meanings of these relationships to better understand the intentions and targets of different campaigns.

Because content analysis can be applied to a broad range of texts, it is used in a variety of fields, including marketing, media studies, anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, and many social science disciplines. It has various possible goals:

• Finding correlations and patterns in how concepts are communicated
• Understanding the intentions of an individual, group or institution
• Identifying propaganda and bias in communication
• Revealing differences in communication in different contexts
• Analyzing the consequences of communication content, such as the flow of information or audience responses

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• Unobtrusive data collection

You can analyze communication and social interaction without the direct involvement of participants, so your presence as a researcher doesn’t influence the results.

• Transparent and replicable

When done well, content analysis follows a systematic procedure that can easily be replicated by other researchers, yielding results with high reliability .

• Highly flexible

You can conduct content analysis at any time, in any location, and at low cost – all you need is access to the appropriate sources.

Focusing on words or phrases in isolation can sometimes be overly reductive, disregarding context, nuance, and ambiguous meanings.

Content analysis almost always involves some level of subjective interpretation, which can affect the reliability and validity of the results and conclusions, leading to various types of research bias and cognitive bias .

• Time intensive

Manually coding large volumes of text is extremely time-consuming, and it can be difficult to automate effectively.

If you want to use content analysis in your research, you need to start with a clear, direct  research question .

Example research question for content analysis

Is there a difference in how the US media represents younger politicians compared to older ones in terms of trustworthiness?

Next, you follow these five steps.

1. Select the content you will analyze

Based on your research question, choose the texts that you will analyze. You need to decide:

• The medium (e.g. newspapers, speeches or websites) and genre (e.g. opinion pieces, political campaign speeches, or marketing copy)
• The inclusion and exclusion criteria (e.g. newspaper articles that mention a particular event, speeches by a certain politician, or websites selling a specific type of product)
• The parameters in terms of date range, location, etc.

If there are only a small amount of texts that meet your criteria, you might analyze all of them. If there is a large volume of texts, you can select a sample .

2. Define the units and categories of analysis

Next, you need to determine the level at which you will analyze your chosen texts. This means defining:

• The unit(s) of meaning that will be coded. For example, are you going to record the frequency of individual words and phrases, the characteristics of people who produced or appear in the texts, the presence and positioning of images, or the treatment of themes and concepts?
• The set of categories that you will use for coding. Categories can be objective characteristics (e.g. aged 30-40 ,  lawyer , parent ) or more conceptual (e.g. trustworthy , corrupt , conservative , family oriented ).

Your units of analysis are the politicians who appear in each article and the words and phrases that are used to describe them. Based on your research question, you have to categorize based on age and the concept of trustworthiness. To get more detailed data, you also code for other categories such as their political party and the marital status of each politician mentioned.

3. Develop a set of rules for coding

Coding involves organizing the units of meaning into the previously defined categories. Especially with more conceptual categories, it’s important to clearly define the rules for what will and won’t be included to ensure that all texts are coded consistently.

Coding rules are especially important if multiple researchers are involved, but even if you’re coding all of the text by yourself, recording the rules makes your method more transparent and reliable.

In considering the category “younger politician,” you decide which titles will be coded with this category ( senator, governor, counselor, mayor ). With “trustworthy”, you decide which specific words or phrases related to trustworthiness (e.g. honest and reliable ) will be coded in this category.

4. Code the text according to the rules

You go through each text and record all relevant data in the appropriate categories. This can be done manually or aided with computer programs, such as QSR NVivo , Atlas.ti and Diction , which can help speed up the process of counting and categorizing words and phrases.

Following your coding rules, you examine each newspaper article in your sample. You record the characteristics of each politician mentioned, along with all words and phrases related to trustworthiness that are used to describe them.

5. Analyze the results and draw conclusions

Once coding is complete, the collected data is examined to find patterns and draw conclusions in response to your research question. You might use statistical analysis to find correlations or trends, discuss your interpretations of what the results mean, and make inferences about the creators, context and audience of the texts.

Let’s say the results reveal that words and phrases related to trustworthiness appeared in the same sentence as an older politician more frequently than they did in the same sentence as a younger politician. From these results, you conclude that national newspapers present older politicians as more trustworthy than younger politicians, and infer that this might have an effect on readers’ perceptions of younger people in politics.

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If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Measures of central tendency
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Thematic analysis
• Cohort study
• Peer review
• Ethnography

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Conformity bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Availability heuristic
• Attrition bias
• Social desirability bias

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HCS100 - Wang

Assignment: communication analysis, background information, finding books & articles, citing sources.

Introduction to Human Communication Studies with Dr. Wang

This Research Guide has been designed to assist you in doing library research for the paper assigned  in your class. It includes links to research tools that will help you find background information; newspaper, magazine and journal articles; and books.

Your assignment is to write an analysis paper about "interpersonal relationship"  and how this is enacted in conversation. Use at least five concepts from the textbook and/or from the class discussions in your analysis. This assignment gives you an opportunity to examine various aspects of communication in greater depth.

Requirements:

• Observe a conversation between you and a friend
• Use at least 5 communication concepts to analyze what the conversation does to help/maintain/hurt your relationship
• Use academic sources to back up your “impressions”.

Feel free at any time to use our Ask Us Anything, chat, or email reference service for additional assistance. You are welcome and encouraged to schedule appointment with me for individual research assistance.

Definition of Analysis

The word  analysis  usually implies   at least two elements:

(a) a breakdown of something into parts or ideas, and

(b) a discussion or description of those parts using a point of view or a method.

If, for example, you were asked to analyze the text of a reading, you would choose several main or important ideas from it, then discuss each in turn using some kind of special point of view, theory, or method.

An analysis in its purest form differs from other types of writing in that its primary concern simply is to explain something in greater or newer detail using a unique point of view, whereas the main purposes of many kinds of papers may be to argue or to evaluate. In fact, some assignments may require you to use analysis to argue a point or to evaluate something. However, if you are required to do nothing but a simple analysis, then your primary goal is to explain something from a unique point of view (s).

The goal of writing an analysis is:

 To read an argumentative essay that you can understand easily and then to analyze its parts step by step, using one or more differing viewpoints or theories.  For this particular class assignment, you are required to use at least five concepts from the textbook and/or from the class discussion.

• Analysis Paper Worksheet

Unique Title:

• Interpersonal Communication Paper
• Project Explanation/Summary

Communication Studies Background Sources

• 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook (SAGE Knowledge)
• Encyclopedia of Communication Theory (Sage Knowledge)
• The SAGE Handbook of Family Communication (SAGE Knowledge)
• The SAGE Handbook of Nonverbal Communication (SAGE Knowledge)
• The SAGE Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence (SAGE Knowledge)
• The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication (Sage Knowledge)
• Sage Knowledge Ebooks This link opens in a new window This extensive collection of scholarly encyclopedias, handbooks, and e-books, has a substantial collection of human communication studies reference sources. Search the full database with the link.

General Databases

•   Ship Discovery Search This link opens in a new window Our most comprehensive search tool. It searches simultaneously most of our library databases, including all our EBSCO databases and the library catalog, among others. Use Ship Discovery Search to locate all our books, ebooks, and videos, as well as our magazine and journal articles in all databases. It provides additional access to news articles and dissertations. Use it in combination with ProQuest All Databases Search . more... less... Access on-campus or off-campus with your ShipID
• Library Catalog This link opens in a new window The Library Catalog is our most comprehensive search tool for the physical items in the Shippensburg University library collections, including books, journals, videos, microfilms, government publications and more. It also includes many digital items that are in our permanent library collections. For a comprehensive listing of all journal titles, both print and online, use the Library Publications (Journal Titles A-Z) tool.
• Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window Academic Search Ultimate is our largest single comprehensive database. It includes records for some 40 million items, with 25+ million immediately available in full-text. It covers all subject areas and includes newspapers and other news sources, general and specialized magazines, and scholarly journals. It is an excellent starting place for most undergraduate research. more... less... Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID. Contents indexed in Ship Library Discovery Search.
• ProQuest Global Newsstream This link opens in a new window One of the most comprehensive news databases in the world, ProQuest Global Newstream includes access to over 3000 news sources, including 2,200 newspapers, as well as blogs, podcasts, websites and news wire feeds worldwide. more... less... Development note - alt link use stats: (91 total hits, 33 since 7/2012 -- 10 /2012)

Topical Databases

• Communication Source This link opens in a new window A comprehensive resource for communication research. Communication Source was developed from a merger of Communication and Mass Media Complete and Communication Abstracts (formerly published by Sage), and includes many unique sources not previously available in other databases. Communication Source offers abstracts and indexing as well as full-text content from publications worldwide pertaining to Communication, Linguistics, Rhetoric and Discourse, Speech-Language Pathology, Media Studies and other fields relevant to the discipline. more... less... Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
• SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window Covers scholarly publications in sociology, social work, criminal justice, and related fields. Contains >2.5 million articles and other materials (70% in full text) with deep coverage from 1960 and some back to 1882. more... less... Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
• Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window Provides citations to some 700,000+ articles in academic journals and professional magazines in criminal justice and related fields. Full text is immediately available for almost 80% of the articles. more... less... Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
• Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new window Contains 500+ journals in psychology and behavioral science not included PsycARTICLES. More than 80% are full-text; almost all are peer-reviewed, many with coverage back to the 1970s.   more... less... Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
• Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window Business Source Complete is the world's definitive scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full text content. As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition, searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,300 journals. more... less... Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.

Citing and Managing Sources

• Ship to Shore: Citing & Managing Sources An introduction to creating citations and managing sources.
• Literature Review and APA Tips

APA Style (American Psychological Association)

Quick guides.

• APA Style 7th Edition Quick Guide (Shippensburg University) Examples of APA style citations, created by Shippensburg University librarians.
• APA Style 7th Edition Step-By-Step Guide (Shippensburg University) Step-by-step instructions for creating APA style citations, created by Shippensburg University librarians.

Detailed Help

• APA Style - Reference Examples (American Psychological Association) Examples of APA style citations for different formats of materials, created by the American Psychological Association.
• APA Style 7th Edition (Shippensburg Library) Shippensburg University's guide for creating APA style citations.
• APA Formatting and Style Guide (Purdue OWL) Purdue University's guide for creating APA style citations.

Manual / APA Website

• APA Style Website (American Psychological Association) Select "Style and Grammar Guidelines" tab for all options.

Tutorials, Sample Papers

• Basics of Seventh Ed. APA Style (Academic Writer Tutorial/APA) Tutorial for writing APA style papers, including formatting, writing style, and references.
• APA Style - Instructional Aids (American Psychological Association) Includes tutorials, handouts, guides, and sample papers.
• APA Sample Paper (Purdue OWL) Sample paper in APA style, from Purdue University.
• Last Updated: Apr 18, 2024 1:42 PM
• URL: https://library.ship.edu/hcs100-wang

Contact the Ezra Lehman Memorial Library

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Communication Studies

What this handout is about.

This handout describes some steps for planning and writing papers in communication studies courses.

Courses in communication studies combine material from the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences in order to explain how and why people interact in the ways that they do. Within communication studies, there are four different approaches to understanding these interactions. Your course probably falls into one of these four areas of emphasis:

• Interpersonal and organizational communication: Interpersonal communication concerns one-on-one conversations as well as small group behaviors. Organizational communication focuses on large group dynamics.
• Rhetoric: Rhetoric examines persuasion and argumentation in political settings and within social movements.
• Performance studies: Performance studies analyze the relationships among literature, theater, and everyday life.
• Media/film studies: Media and film studies explore the cultural influences and practical techniques of television and film, as well as new technologies.

Understanding your assignment

The content and purpose of your assignments will vary according to what kind of course you are in, so pay close attention to the course description, syllabus, and assignment sheet when you begin to write. If you’d like to learn more about deciphering writing assignments or developing your academic writing, see our Writing Center handouts on these topics. For now, let’s see how a general topic, same-sex friendships, might be treated in each of the different areas. These illustrations are only examples, but you can use them as springboards to help you identify how your course might approach discussing a broad topic.

Interpersonal communication

An interpersonal communication perspective could focus on the verbal and nonverbal differences and similarities between how women communicate with other women and how men communicate with other men. This topic would allow you to explore the ways in which gender affects our behaviors in close relationships.

Organizational communication

Organizational communication would take a less personal approach, perhaps by addressing same-sex friendships in the form of workplace mentoring programs that pair employees of the same sex. This would require you to discuss and analyze group dynamics and effectiveness in the work environment.

A rhetorical analysis could involve comparing and contrasting references to friendship in the speeches of two well-known figures. For instance, you could compare Aristotle’s comments about Plato to Plato’s comments about Aristotle in order to discover more about the relationship between these two men and how each defined their friendship and/or same-sex friendship in general.

Performance studies

A performance approach might involve describing how a literary work uses dramatic conventions to portray same-sex friendships, as well as critiquing how believable those portrayals are. An analysis of the play Waiting for Godot could unpack the lifelong friendship between the two main characters by identifying what binds the men together, how these ties are effectively or ineffectively conveyed to the audience, and what the play teaches us about same-sex friendships in our own lives.

Media and film studies

Finally, a media and film studies analysis might explain the evolution of a same-sex friendship by examining a cinematic text. For example, you could trace the development of the main friendship in the movie Thelma and Louise to discover how certain events or gender stereotypes affect the relationship between the two female characters.

General writing tips

Writing papers in communication studies often requires you to do three tasks common to academic writing: analyze material, read and critique others’ analyses of material, and develop your own argument around that material. You will need to build an original argument (sometimes called a “theory” or “plausible explanation”) about how a communication phenomenon can be better understood. The word phenomenon can refer to a particular communication event, text, act, or conversation. To develop an argument for this kind of paper, you need to follow several steps and include several kinds of information in your paper. (For more information about developing an argument, see our handout on arguments ). First, you must demonstrate your knowledge of the phenomenon and what others have said about it. This usually involves synthesizing previous research or ideas. Second, you must develop your own original perspective, reading, or “take” on the phenomenon and give evidence to support your way of thinking about it. Your “take” on the topic will constitute your “argument,” “theory,” or “explanation.” You will need to write a thesis statement that encapsulates your argument and guides you and the reader to the main point of your paper. Third, you should critically analyze the arguments of others in order to show how your argument contributes to our general understanding of the phenomenon. In other words, you should identify the shortcomings of previous research or ideas and explain how your paper corrects some or all of those deficits. Assume that your audience for your paper includes your classmates as well as your instructor, unless otherwise indicated in the assignment.

Choosing a topic to write about

Your topic might be as specific as the effects of a single word in conversation (such as how the use of the word “well” creates tentativeness in dialogue) or as broad as how the notion of individuality affects our relationships in public and private spheres of human activity. In deciding the scope of your topic, look again at the purpose of the course and the aim of the assignment. Check with your instructor to gauge the appropriateness of your topic before you go too far in the writing process.

Try to choose a topic in which you have some interest or investment. Your writing for communications will not only be about the topic, but also about yourself—why you care about the topic, how it affects you, etc. It is common in the field of communication studies not only to consider why the topic intrigues you, but also to write about the experiences and/or cognitive processes you went through before choosing your topic. Including this kind of introspection helps readers understand your position and how that position affects both your selection of the topic and your analysis within the paper. You can make your argument more persuasive by knowing what is at stake, including both objective research and personal knowledge in what you write.

Using evidence to support your ideas

Your argument should be supported with evidence, which may include, but is not limited to, related studies or articles, films or television programs, interview materials, statistics, and critical analysis of your own making. Relevant studies or articles can be found in such journals as Journal of Communication , Quarterly Journal of Speech , Communication Education , and Communication Monographs . Databases, such as Infotrac and ERIC, may also be helpful for finding articles and books on your topic (connecting to these databases via NC Live requires a UNC IP address or UNC PID). As always, be careful when using Internet materials—check your sources to make sure they are reputable.

Refrain from using evidence, especially quotations, without explicitly and concretely explaining what the evidence shows in your own words. Jumping from quote to quote does not demonstrate your knowledge of the material or help the reader recognize the development of your thesis statement. A good paper will link the evidence to the overall argument by explaining how the two correspond to one another and how that relationship extends our understanding of the communication phenomenon. In other words, each example and quote should be explained, and each paragraph should relate to the topic.

As mentioned above, your evidence and analysis should not only support the thesis statement but should also develop it in ways that complement your paper’s argument. Do not just repeat the thesis statement after each section of your paper; instead, try to tell what that section adds to the argument and what is special about that section when the thesis statement is taken into consideration. You may also include a discussion of the paper’s limitations. Describing what cannot be known or discussed at this time—perhaps because of the limited scope of your project, lack of new research, etc.—keeps you honest and realistic about what you have accomplished and shows your awareness of the topic’s complexity.

Communication studies idiosyncrasies

• Using the first person (I/me) is welcomed in nearly all areas of communication studies. It is probably best to ask your professor to be sure, but do not be surprised if you are required to talk about yourself within the paper as a researcher, writer, and/or subject. Some assignments may require you to write from a personal perspective and expect you to use “I” to express your ideas.
• Always include a Works Cited (MLA) or References list (APA) unless you are told not to. Not giving appropriate credit to those whom you quote or whose ideas inform your argument is plagiarism. More and more communication studies courses are requiring bibliographies and in-text citations with each writing assignment. Ask your professor which citation format (MLA/APA) to use and see the corresponding handbook for citation rules.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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The Communicator’s Guide to Research, Analysis, and Evaluation

Download Full Guide (PDF): The Communicator’s Guide to Research, Analysis, and Evaluation Russian Translation of this Guide (Full PDF): The Communicator’s Guide to Research, Analysis, and Evaluation (Russian) Kazakh Translation of this Guide (Full PDF): The Communicator’s Guide to Research, Analysis, and Evaluation  (Kazakh)

This Guide is presented by the IPR Measurement Commission

The  Communicator’s Guide to Research, Analysis, and Evaluation  was created to help public relations leaders understand how they can apply data, research, and analytics to uncover insights that inform strategic decision making, improve communication performance, and deliver meaningful business contributions.

A five-step cyclical process based on the core components of communication research, analysis, and evaluation serves as the cornerstone of this report.

This Guide also underscores why research, analysis, and evaluation are critical in communication. Additionally, the Guide features examples and applications, a research and evaluation cadence reporting table, an outline of commtech tools for enterprises, and the top 10 “must-reads” on evaluation.

CONTRIBUTORS Mark Weiner (Primary Author),  Cognito Insights Marcia DiStaso, Ph.D., APR, University of Florida Pauline Draper-Watts, 20/20 Insights & Consulting Christof Ehrhart, University of Leipzig Alexis Fitzsimmons, University of Florida John Gilfeather, John Gilfeather & Associates Mohammad Hamid, Radian Partners Rob Jekielek, The Harris Poll Fraser Likely,  University of Ottawa & Fraser Likely PR/Comm Performance Management Jim Macnamara, Ph.D., University of Technology Sydney Tina McCorkindale, Ph.D., APR, Institute for Public Relations Chelsea Mirkin, Cision Insights Chris Monteiro, CM Consulting LLC Don Stacks, Ph.D., University of Miami

MEDIA CONTACT Nikki Kesaris Communications & Marketing Manager Institute for Public Relations [email protected]

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS Founded in 1956, the Institute for Public Relations is an independent, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the science beneath the art of public relations.™  IPR creates, curates, and promotes research and initiatives that empower professionals with actionable insights and intelligence they can put to immediate use.  IPR predicts and analyzes global factors transforming the profession, and amplifies and engages the profession globally through thought leadership and programming. All research is available free at www.instituteforpr.org and provides the basis for IPR’s professional conferences and events.

All materials copyrighted by the Institute for Public Relations.

Olivia K. Fajardo

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat. Follow on Twitter

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Lesson 3. Question Analysis: From Assignment to Message

Key concepts.

• Communication message tasks begin with an assignment.
• Communication assignments can sometimes be very specific, and sometimes quite vague.
• The scope of the assignment needs to be clarified as much as possible.
• Sometimes an assignment will be ambiguous and initial research must be done.
• The first “audience” that a communicator must keep in mind is the “gatekeeper” audience.
• One of the most important things to determine at this stage is the purpose of the message.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

• understand the types of assignments that might trigger the need to develop a comprehensive information strategy.
• articulate the questions you need to ask of your supervisor/colleagues to clarify the message task.
• determine what the person giving the assignment requires.
• determine the parameters of the information task.
• determine the purpose of the message.

As students you’ve all dealt with frustratingly ambiguous assignments. Knowing how many pages you are required to write, how the document should be formatted, whether and how to cite the information used – all of these are specifics of the assignment that you hope your instructors spell out for you. If those specifics aren’t clear, you ask your teachers to give you more detail on the parameters of the assignment and on the “metrics” that will be used to judge the quality of the work you turn in.

When on the job, the assignments you get will usually not have this level of detail. In fact, “deals well with ambiguity” is often a line on job descriptions about the ideal candidate. Clarifying the task will be one of the first steps the communicator must take when a supervisor throws out an assignment like, “One of our clients is interested in exploring e-wallets. What do we know about them?” or “We have to do a better job of getting legislators to understand our company. Do an analysis.” or “There have been lots of motorcycle accidents in the past month – we ought to do an in-depth story.”

Determining as completely as possible the “context” for the message will help you begin to put parameters around the task.

In this lesson we will discuss the aspects of a message assignment that you should clarify with the “gatekeeper.” The more you know about what the “gatekeeper” in a communications organization looks for and values, the more you will be able to pursue a strategy that leads you to successfully fulfilling the message mission.

Information Strategies for Communicators Copyright © 2015 by Kathleen A. Hansen and Nora Paul is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

How to Improve Communication Skills: 14 Best Worksheets

“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.”

But how do we put this strategy into action?

In this post, we’ll give you the tools to be a strategic and effective communicator, no matter your context, by walking you through a range of worksheets, digital activities, and resources to discover better communication.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Communication Exercises (PDF) for free . These science-based tools will help you and those you work with build better social skills and better connect with others.

This Article Contains:

How to improve communication skills, 3 examples of good communication skills, 3 most effective worksheets and tools, 3 games for developing communication skills, assessing your client’s skills: 3 questionnaires & scales, using digital tools to improve communication, how to use quenza: 5 benefits of digital platforms, communication resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

Whether you’re delivering a presentation to a room full of conference attendees or hashing out a disagreement with your partner, many of the skills you need to achieve your goals in these different scenarios will be the same.

To improve your communication techniques, scholars recommend training in the following skills.

Perspective taking

Defined as a cognitive attempt to consider another’s viewpoint (Longmire & Harrison, 2018), perspective taking enables us to communicate in a way that is likely to resonate with others in the way we intended.

Perspective taking is often referred to as putting yourself in another’s shoes.

For instance, when preparing a presentation, we can take the perspective of our audience by considering their background knowledge on the subject of our talk. By doing so, we can communicate in a way that will match the listeners’ level of background knowledge, rather than leaving them in the dust.

Likewise, we can be intentional about trying to take our partner’s perspective during a disagreement by imagining how our actions might make them feel or by imagining how we would feel if the roles in the conflict were reversed.

Usually, this involves showing empathy to the person you are speaking to and creating space for their emotions.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness involves being able to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection . It requires you to separate your sense of identity from your thoughts and emotions.

But why is this important?

According to organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich (Workforce.com, 2020), we can only be as good at influence or collaboration (and a range of other skills) as we are at self-awareness. That is to say, if we work to develop our self-awareness , it can have a ripple effect on our ability to communicate, engage, and empathize with others.

In the example of delivering a conference presentation, self-awareness may help us recognize that we appear withdrawn when speaking to a crowd. This awareness then enables us to amend our behavior and style of communication.

Likewise, in the example of the disagreement with a partner, self-awareness might help us recognize our tendency to grow defensive to perceived criticism in a particular area. Self-awareness can counter this, allowing us to remain open minded and curious in such discussions.

In sum, good communication involves balancing our own perspective with that of others to convey a message successfully and accept feedback .

To empathize is to

“respond to another’s perceived emotional state by experiencing feelings of a similar sort.”

Chismar, 1988, p. 257

Showing empathy is another way to take the perspective of a conversation partner by acknowledging and validating their emotions in a situation.

No matter the situation, there’s usually a place for empathic communication. Let’s look at three scenarios. For each, see if you can identify the more empathic response out of the two response options.

A nasty bruise

• Scenario : You are having coffee with your sibling, and they hold out their arm to reveal a dark welt on their arm. “Check out this bruise from my fall down the stairs!” they say.

Which of the following is the more empathic response?

• Response A : You squint at the bruise. “That’s tiny,” you say. “Look at what I got when I was hit by a bike!”
• Response B : You wince. “Ouch! I can imagine that must have really hurt.”

Problems with Mom

• Scenario : You’re walking down the street in conversation with a friend. He’s been describing a recent conversation with his mother, in which he grew very frustrated. “When she shows up at my house without calling first, it’s stressful for me, but I can’t get her to listen to my point of view.”
• Response A : “I’m sure it’s just because she really wants to see you.”
• Response B : “I can imagine that must be really frustrating if you never know when she’s going to stop by.”

Missing money

• Scenario : You and your friend are at the counter at a coffee shop. As your friend goes to pay, her card gets declined. “I can’t understand where all my money goes after I get paid,” she laments.
• Response A : “I reckon you should make a budget.”
• Response B : “Yeah, it’s annoying when money disappears like that.”

In each of the above scenarios, Response B is the more empathic option. In these responses, the speaker validates the other person’s emotions and reflects them back to the other person.

Download 3 Communication Exercises (PDF)

These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients with tools to improve communication skills and enjoy more positive social interactions with others.

Download 3 Free Communication Tools Pack (PDF)

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Let’s now look at three free worksheets and tools you can use to help develop your clients’ perspective taking, self-awareness, and empathy when communicating.

• Active Listening Reflection Worksheet This worksheet provides a useful summary of the techniques involved in active listening . Once the techniques have been reviewed, clients can practice them in pairs or groups or reflect on a recent conversation with someone in their life to apply their learning.
• Trading Places Worksheet The Trading Places worksheet takes your client through 10 steps to help them imagine a situation from another’s perspective. These steps can be especially useful when a client is struggling to move forward following a disagreement with someone in their life.
• How to Improve Communication in Relationships: 7 Essential Skills This simple leaflet details seven approaches and frameworks to better understand how we communicate and develop our skills in relating to others.

Check out these three games for both children and adults, designed to make strengthening communication with others fun:

• 500 Years Ago In this free worksheet , players attempt to describe modern-day phenomena to their partner, who pretends they have no knowledge of the modern world because they are from long in the past. In each round, the speaker must practice empathic communication and perspective taking by tailoring their language to their old-timey listener.
• Shuffle In this game , five children race to occupy four positions at the corners of a square marked on the floor. As kids play rounds of rock–paper–scissors to resolve disputes, the game will introduce them to the basic principles of conflict and negotiation .
• Where Should We Begin? A Game of Stories In this card game by leading psychotherapist Esther Perel, players take turns drawing cards to tell stories about themselves, their hopes, and their dreams. In doing so, participants can grow closer and share greater intimacy through the power of storytelling.

Communication skills – how to improve communication skills

Want to assess your client’s communication skills? Look at these three useful questionnaires and scales:

• Effective Communication Styles Inventory This test uses 15 forced-choice items to help individuals determine their preferred communication styles, including thinking, doing, collaborating, and creating.
• The Revised Self-Monitoring Scale This scale by Lennox and Wolfe (1984) is a 13-item adaptation of Snyder’s (1974) 25-item Self-Monitoring Scale. This reconfigured scale is a useful way to help clients assess two facets of their communication: their ability to modify their self-presentation and their sensitivity to the expressions of others.
• The Communication Effectiveness Profile This 84-item inventory provides a comprehensive assessment of seven factors contributing to good or bad communication, including empathizing and the ability to read nonverbal cues .

Thankfully, many new tools, games, and approaches are emerging to help facilitate communication training and skill development through virtual channels.

3 Games for your videoconferencing sessions

If you’re looking to improve communication with a small group or work team, here are some fun games and digital interventions you can use to have fun, break the ice, and encourage open communication via video conferencing.

• Synonym challenge Get everyone engaged, expand your vocabulary, and warm up your call participants with the synonym challenge.

Time: About one minute per round How to play : Determine a turn order for each participant in the call. Begin by having the first player say a word. Participants must then proceed in sequence, saying synonyms for that original word without repeating a word already said. The first player to take longer than five seconds to say a word is eliminated from the next round.

• Virtual escape rooms Emerging research has pointed to escape rooms as possible avenues for developing team capabilities and creative problem solving (Adams, Burger, Crawford, & Setter, 2018; Cohen et al., 2020). Why not try one out with your team?

Time: About one hour How to play : With virtual escape rooms, players must work in teams to watch videos, track clues, and cooperate, all to escape a virtual environment or race another team to complete a series of puzzles.

See The Escape Game for a popular virtual escape room provider and more information.

• Virtual murder mystery Break the ice and have fun with role-play at your next video call get-together by solving a quirky murder mystery.

Time: Typically one to two hours How to play : Each participant in a call is assigned a character or role with background information about their motivations and why they might be a suspect in a central murder mystery. Participants must then chat with one another in character to deduce information about the possible murderer (or point the finger at someone else if they are the murderer).

Check out the whodunnit app for a popular virtual murder mystery provider.

A look at Quenza software

If you’re a counselor, therapist, or social worker looking for tools to help your clients improve their communication, be sure to check out the growing library of pre-programmed tools available via the platform Quenza .

We designed this platform in collaboration with the positive psychology community to put leading science-backed worksheets and tools directly into the hands of helping practitioners and their clients.

To illustrate, here are just a couple of communication tools available through the platform, which you can access and try for yourself for just $1 :

• Learning to Say No Living in line with your values means you will sometimes need to make choices that disappoint others. This seven-part mini-lesson will give your clients guidelines and practical advice for respectfully saying no in the service of their personal values.
• Eight Steps to Forgiveness When communication mishaps occur, forgiving others is easier said than done. This essential eight-step lesson is based on the teachings of forgiveness expert Dr. Robert Enright and will help your clients release themselves from the distress of betrayal and hurt feelings.

If you’re curious about using digital interventions as part of your relationship counseling , coaching, or psychology practice, consider how these interventions might interact with other elements of your business.

In general, using digital platforms can streamline many aspects of your workflow while enabling clients to work within an organized digital environment, where all their information is in one place.

Benefits of using digital platforms to deliver care can include the following:

• Access to professional tools to develop digital activities, learning pathways, and lessons
• The ability to sort clients according to groups and initiate actions that affect all group members (e.g., sending homework materials)
• The creation of a centralized location to store clients’ contact information and documentation
• Access to modern security features (e.g., HIPAA/GDPR compliance)
• The ability to connect with other practitioners to share best practice learnings

Quenza offers all these benefits, and new features are always being added. Getting started with the platform takes only three steps:

• Sign up for a 30-day trial .
• View the brief quickstart video .
• Jump into the Activity Builder to begin preparing your first digital activity or browse the platform’s expansion library to select a pre-developed activity for your first client.

To learn more, take a look at the Quenza roadmap for a summary of existing and upcoming features.

17 Exercises To Develop Positive Communication

17 Positive Communication Exercises [PDFs] to help others develop communication skills for successful social interactions and positive, fulfilling relationships.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Looking for more resources to teach communication skills? Here are some free materials you can use when conducting therapy, coaching, or counseling with groups:

• Listening Accurately Worksheet This handout presents five simple steps to facilitate accurate listening and can help establish some basics for training in effective communication.
• Communicating an Idea Effectively This handout lists three key features of a well-explained idea and strategies for building these into one’s communication.
• Making Eye Contact Exercise This exercise is a fun way to kick off a group training day by warming up people’s non-verbal communication skills.
• Effective Communication in Therapy & Counseling: 17 Techniques This article about communication in therapy is a helpful guide for therapists as it provides a number of techniques that can be used to improve the therapeutic relationship.

Whether you’re the quietest person at a table or a smooth-talking socialite, the ability to put yourself in the shoes of those with whom you speak is key to effective communication.

Likewise, understanding yourself in terms of your strengths and potential biases when communicating can only serve you as you connect with others. Be sure to check out the resources throughout this post to help you or your clients develop these skills today for better relationships tomorrow.

We hope you’ve found this post and the listed resources useful. Let us know in the comments: What’s one technique or skill you’ve used to improve your communication?

We’d love to hear from you!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Communication Exercises (PDF) for free .

• Adams, V., Burger, S., Crawford, K., & Setter, R. (2018). Can you escape? Creating an escape room to facilitate active learning. Journal for Nurses in Professional Development , 34 (2), E1–E5.
• Carnegie, D. (2019). How to win friends and influence people . Vermillion.
• Chismar, D. (1988). Empathy and sympathy: The important difference. The Journal of Value Inquiry , 22 (4), 257–266.
• Cohen, T. N., Griggs, A. C., Keebler, J. R., Lazzara, E. H., Doherty, S. M., Kanji, F. F., & Gewertz, B. L. (2020). Using escape rooms for conducting team research: Understanding development, considerations, and challenges. Simulation & Gaming , 51 (4), 443–460.
• Lennox, R. D., & Wolfe, R. N. (1984). Revision of the Self-Monitoring Scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 46 (6), 1349–1364.
• Longmire, N. H., & Harrison, D. A. (2018). Seeing their side versus feeling their pain: Differential consequences of perspective-taking and empathy at work. Journal of Applied Psychology , 103 (8), 894–915.
• Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 30(4), 526-537.
• Workforce.com. (2020). Build self-awareness to develop influence [Video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/yQ7ZfODyafw

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Social Media Syllabus

Here’s my communication research class assignment on analyzing media placement.

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Table of Contents

Why a Communication Research Class Quantitative Content Analysis Assignment?

In my opening post to the Spring 2018 semester, I reviewed several new assignments and activities I will be bringing into my classes this semester.

In this post, I will discuss the quantitative content analysis assignment that students will complete in my COMM 435 Communication Research course. The project simulates an analysis of earned media placement.

update – 12/3/18:  To see a follow up post to this post, check out Communication Research Class Media Placement Assignment, Part 2: Doing Data Entry and Creating a Data Legend .

[Here are all the posts about that class, including discussion of past projects] .

Background: About my Communication Research Class

My aim with the communication research class is to offer our students experience learning about a variety of approaches to conducting research. My goal is to mix methodology (i.e., the study of research methods) with practical applications that students may run into in their careers. This course is not a graduate school prep course. It is designed for students who are planning to go into industry.

I think a struggle that many of us have is that there is a sense that we need to prepare students to be able to do the “new and cool stuff” (e.g., social media data analysis) in the research class, while balancing educating students about the research process, research ethics, designing measurements, building methods, gathering data, analyzing data, interpreting data, etc.

Unfortunately, we only have this one research class in our department as we are a small department serving a wide array of needs. I know that some other universities have advanced research or analytics courses. Thus, for me, I need to fit in both emerging methods and what some might see as traditional, evergreen methods:  content analysis, surveys, focus groups, interviews.

With this in mind, my students complete 3 assignments in the class, with each assignment focusing on a different topic. Each assignment is situated in a hypothetical, but plausible situation. I present the situation to the students via the assignment, and then we go through the steps of learning how to solve the problem put forth in the assignment. The assignments explore:

• Content analysis of media artifacts (in the form of an analysis of earned media placement)
• Social data analysis
• Surveys, interviews, focus groups.

Each project is done in teams. This blog post will focus on project 1, content analysis of media artifacts.

As an side, if you’re interested in learning about the social data analysis assignment, last year I wrote a 4-part series on that assignment that I’ve gotten a lot of comments and questions about.

Project 1: The Set Up to Teaching Content Analysis

Learning research methods is a challenge for anyone new to it. Undergraduates sometimes express a strong aversion to the topic.

I’ve found that a content analysis of media artifacts is the most approachable method for introducing students to the systematic nature of doing research.

During the first few weeks of class, students are learning about research (e.g., the process, concepts such as reliability & generalizability, what research methods are, sampling, etc.).

After that, I introduce a hypothetical situation that the students will have to solve for their first project. Each year, I change up the situation a little bit. But the nuts and bolts have remained the same for the last 3 years.

I use the format from the Stacks book to set up the hypothetical situation students will address. You can see the entire text for the situation in the assignment at the bottom of this post. I will be referring to it in the paragraphs below.

The hypothetical is that the students work for an agency representing Netflix. Netflix is facing greater competition from other online streaming services like Amazon. To keep its competitive edge, Netflix is working to create shows that will appeal to a key market: 30-somethings. Stranger Things is one such show. Season 2 just launched.

Because the success of Netflix shows is widely influenced by critical acclaim from media, a media relations campaign was undertaken to position Netflix positively relative to itself competitors as a streaming service by way of the show.  The objectives of the campaign were to gain positive coverage of the premiere of season 2 of Stranger things.

The students enter the situation after the campaign has been executed and the campaign is now in the evaluation stage. Their job is to evaluate whether the media coverage was earned and what the nature of that coverage was.

Content Analysis Data Collection Activity

I used to gather a sample of news articles from LexisNexis and provide them to the students. This semester, the students will gather the data set themselves using the Meltwater social intelligence software . I’m excited about this because it gets the students into Meltwater and thinking about the use of the tool’s dashboard features. In addition, students are learning that they have the ability to pull down data for further analysis outside of Meltwater.

[ You can learn more about the Meltwater University program in this blog post. ]

The Meltwater software enables users to gather news articles from a given time period. Searches are conducted using keywords. Stranger things season 2 launched October 27, 2017. So the data set is built around the season premiere. I don’t have a strong research justification for the exact date range chosen. Rather, I chose it because it produced a manageable number of articles for each student to have to code.

Also, please note that I do not operationalize what “top news sources” are from the assignment objectives. Instead, for purposes of the exercise, I have students pick the top 5 sources related to their search results to analyze.

You can see the procedure for gathering the data via the Meltwater for Media Article Content Analysis lab guide I created.

Content Analysis Data Analysis for Students

There is a lot you could do with Meltwater to analyze the articles related to the launch of season 2 of Stranger Things.  If I had more time for this project, we’d dig into a lot of the dashboard tools. For now, students are only focusing on the quantitative content analysis of news articles.

I provide the students with details about specific research questions they are trying to answer related to media coverage: placement, share of voice, and whether or not the campaign’s 3 key messages made it into the press.

The data analysis is a simple quantitative content analysis of media artifacts. A simple coding sheet is provided. We discuss inter-coder reliability. And each student codes his/her media articles by hand using the coding sheet.

In class, we go over the coding sheet. And, in addition to the items on the coding sheet, which align with the research questions, students come up with their own item to code and to report in their paper. I do this exercise to get the students thinking about other things they could look for in the articles that might be useful.

It is worth noting that during a class activity earlier in the semester, students design their own coding sheets to evaluate car commercials and they learn quite a bit about the ups and downs of creating coding sheets. But, for the project, I create and provide the coding sheet. The operationalizations from the coding sheet are based on our class text, Paine’s “ Measure what Matters: Online Tools for Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships .” For example, in class we discuss what we mean when we say that share of voice is “exclusive” or “dominant.”

While some of the coding can be done in class, students finish the coding as homework.

You can see the coding sheet that we will use this semester at the bottom of this blog post.

The students take their coded data and enter it into a spreadsheet so that we can quickly run frequency reports using SPSS.

Quantitative Content Analysis Assignment: The Write Up

With project 1, the write up that students produce is limited to providing a problem overview, the results, and a brief discussion section along with an appendix of their coding sheet. In the second and third projects students are asked to produce more and more of what a research paper might look like. But, because this is not an academic research class, I try to balance introducing students to a more academic style of research writing with a style that is more suitable to a report they might right in industry. I use a similar format to the format presented in the Stacks book.

I provide students with several handouts to help them write up their results.

One opportunity this assignment always presents, is a discussion about the limitations “simply measuring” the items on the coding sheet without looking at any context. As such, students are to go into their data and identify the features of the articles that support their results. Thus, they find example headlines and quotes to demonstrate, say, an example of a key message that was amplified.

Some Limitations

This project is, of course, limited in several rather important respects. However, I’ve created this project because it provides a great opportunity to introduce students to research, what a content analysis is, how to use a coding sheet, inter-coder reliability (invariably there are disagreements into how aspects of articles should be coded), and more.  Further, the project presents these learning opportunities within the context of learning a little bit about how one might evaluate earned media coverage. For example, students have learned about key messages in other classes. Now, they are learning about how those key messages may make their way into media articles and how the media represents them.

The project accomplishes this while situating the assignment in a campaign that is hypothetical but that is based on real events: Stranger Things Season 2 is real. Many of my students love the show and have watched it. They are reading real media articles about the show.  Further, students are situating this project as a campaign evaluation because the entire project is situated within the narrative that the students already executed the campaign and now they are evaluating it.

A Thought About the Key Messages Portion of the Coding Sheet

Each year I have changed up the Netflix show that we analyze and have thus changed the hypothetical backstory that accompanies it.

The key messages on the coding sheets are messages that I made up. They do not change much year to year, other than to bring them into the context of the show we’re evaluating. For example, this year I changed key message number two to emphasize the theme of nostalgia, which relates to the 30-something audience we are trying to target. I write the messages to be purposefully broad enough that they always end up achieving a good amount of frequency in the data set. The key messages are based on my general knowledge of Netflix. This year, it is possible that we won’t get many hits on key message number two. But, we’re bound to have some success with all three. However, if you choose to do this project and have some time, a better way to write the key messages would be to read through the data set ahead of time and develop them based on your own content analysis of the articles.

The next step is to teach students how to do data entry into a spreadsheet and to create a data legend . Read the follow up post in which I explain how to do this.

I hope that you found this blog post interesting and helpful. If you have ideas on how I can improve this project, please leave a comment or Tweet me . If you decide to use a version of this project in your own class, please stop on back and let readers know how it went or ways that you built upon it.

Don’t forget to check out the assignment below and the accompanying coding sheet.

– Matt

Project 1: Media Placement Assignment Handout

Project 1 Coding Sheet

Note: The hypothetical situation above uses the names of a real brand, Netflix, and its product. However, the situation is entirely made up and exists for educational purposes. Netflix logo is copyright Netflix.

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2 thoughts on “Here’s My Communication Research Class Assignment on Analyzing Media Placement”

Hi Matt, I’m thinking about using an assignment similar to your Netflix assignment. At the end of your document, it says that Day 2 will be explained in a different document. Is there more to this assignment?

Kelli, Awesome to hear! It is a fun assignment. Thank you for your question. On the second day, I teach the students how to enter their data into SPSS so we can run basic descriptive statistics. This could probably also be done in Excel. I’ll have to write up a post on how I teach students to think about creating a data legend. In the meantime, I will email you the exercise I use and the handout. Please keep an eye out for my email. I hope you have a great day!

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634 Communication Essay Topics & Examples

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