A Content Analysis of Reliability in Advertising Content Analysis Studies.

Content analysis is a systematic research method for examining symbolical content in communication by recording or transcribing these messages into categories. Reliability is one of the most distinctive attributes of content analysis methodology comparing to other techniques in communication. A content analysis was conducted by analyzing the method sections of published journal articles in Communication Abstracts from January 2006 through January 2011 by searching advertising and content analysis . Results suggested that television is still the most focused medium in advertising content analysis research. Most of the content analysis studies employed 2 coders for coding reliability assessment data and final data. Moreover, content analysis researchers had improved in reporting reliability and reliability coefficients. However, there was a low percentage of studies that reported specific reliability for each variable as well as the lowest acceptable level for the reliability coefficients