Concept Sampling: A New Twist for Content Analysis

A new form of sampling for qualitative content analysis is introduced-concept sampling. Making use of software originally targeted at finding documents on both the Internet and a user's hard drive, researchers can find important lexical concepts, document their use in context, separate groups of users who share similar meanings, and map the meanings in semantic space. The software is able to deal with a large corpus of data, eliminating many of the reliability problems associated with selective sampling, and with actual words used in context, eliminating the potential interpretive bias inherent in a researcher's choice of codes and coding concepts. Although the software is not capable of substituting for human judgment, it is capable of assisting a researcher in mastering a large unknown corpus quickly, thus allowing a researcher to devote more and better time to analysis and understanding. Examples are shown drawn from leading journals, books, interviews, and the Internet.