Conducting Content Analysis of Documents in Network Research: A Review of Recent Scholarship

Abstract

In this study I examine how researchers have conducted content analysis of documents to collect and analyze network data in public administration. Content analyses of documents help us understand the contexts and meanings of network ties. Researchers can also analyze docu- ments to examine the changes of network ties over time. The types of documents that researchers have used to draw network data are diverse, but the ways they are used are limited. The majority of articles reviewed for this study focused on drawing interorganizational collaboration data, whereas in a few articles content analysis was conducted to draw policy network data. In this study I found that most of the existing network research has converted qualitative data extracted from documents to numerical data for quantitative analysis and has not fully taken advantage of the qualitative data. Researchers can also benefit from providing explicit coding rules and proce- dures to ensure the quality of network data collection.