ABSTRACT
Content analysis describes a research technique where a planner makes observations by systematically analyzing written or spoken communication, such as planning commission meeting transcripts concerning a proposed subdivision, to assess who said what about the project. Content analysis is commonly associated with secondary data—data slices generated by a person or government agency that are analyzed and applied in a research project by someone else. (Primary data are generated and used by the same researcher.) Newspaper articles are one example of secondary data commonly used by planners in content analysis. Content analysis usually samples a smaller field of textual resources within a shorter time period than meta-analysis.
