Content theory to analyze data

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During the pedagogical implementation done with deaf students, they produced different pieces of written texts to “demonstrate” their learning process. As I had to analyze them in order to identify information trends and patterns which were useful to find possible answers to the research questions, I found Content Analysis technique appropriate to do this examination.

According to Krippendorff (2004 p.18) “Content Analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use”.

The following reasons support the choice of Content Theory to analyze the data.

1. It makes emphasis on meaning rather on quantification and helped me to build an interpretation of key data sources like gestures and non verbal communication details which are important aspects to analyze in the work with deaf participants.

2. Not only the written texts obtained with the students’ artifacts were analyzed with this technique, the recorded interview, my logs including the classroom observations and two written surveys were also useful to do the data analysis.

3. Content Analysis theory enabled me to make some inferences about the language acquisition process of deaf university students. In addition, the data obtained was analyzed in several levels taking into account the context, the natural occurrence of language and even the human interaction of deaf participants.

Reference

Krippendorff, K. ( 2004 p.18) Content Analysis: An introduction to its methodology.Sage Publications. London, U.K.