CODING CHOICES FOR TEXTUAL ANALYSIS - A COMPARISON OF CONTENT-ANALYSIS AND MAP ANALYSIS

Content and map analysis, procedures for coding and understanding texts, are described and contrasted. Where content analysis focuses on the extraction of concepts from texts, map analysis focuses on the extraction of both concepts and the relationships among them. Map analysis thus subsumes content analysis. Coding choices that must be made prior to employing content-analytic procedures are enumerated, as are additional coding choices necessary for employing map-analytic procedures. The discussion focuses on general issues that transcend specific software procedures for coding texts from either a content-analytic or map-analytic perspective.