Structuring the unstructured data: the use of content analysis

Content analysis is a research technique used to organise large amounts of
textual data into standardised formats which allows arriving at suggestions/conclusions.
Content analysis can be carried out quantitatively by counting the words or qualitatively by
coding. The former approach refers to counting the frequency of the keywords and the later
refers to identifying similar themes or concepts from the data set. This paper discusses the use
of conceptual content analysis by using computerised software to analyse data gathered from
semi-structured interviews. The context of the research within which content analysis is used
is to identify the influence of performance measurement towards construction research
activities. The paper first explains the research methodology pertaining to this study by
reasoning out the selection of case study research approach coupled with semi-structured
interviews. The paper then discusses how the information gathered from semi-structured
interviews is fed into the computerised software to identify and generate main concepts of the
study.