A Study of Quantitative Content Analysis of Health Messages in U.S. Media From 1985 to 2005

Figures & data

FIGURE 1 Flow chart of article selection.

TABLE 1 Characteristics of Content Analysis Articles Included in the Study (n = 441)

	Number	%
Journal discipline
Other/interdisciplinary	157	36
Health	138	31
Communication	109	25
Psychology/sociology	26	6
Aging	10	2
Media type
Magazines	154	35
Television	137	31
Newspaper	127	29
Movies	53	12
Music videos	9	2
Video games	5	1
Music	3	1
Topic
Violence	89	20
Sex	70	16
Tobacco	64	15
Obesity/nutrition	50	11
Alcohol	45	10
Cancer	31	7
Aging	30	7
Body image/eating disorder	26	6
Other	27	6
Mental health	25	6
Prescription drugs	23	5
Drugs	23	5
Health providers/organizations	20	5
Injury	18	4
Death and disability	14	3
AIDS	12	3
Women's health	9	2
Genetics	6	1
Theory
None	199	45
Other	118	27
Social learning theory	67	15
Cultivation theory	45	10
Framing	42	10
Agenda setting	38	9
Socialization	31	7
Desensitization	12	3
Reliability
Yes	309	70
Reliability by variable (n = 309)
Yes	181	59
Reliability statistic (n = 309)
Simple agreement	140	45
Not identified	56	18
Cohen's kappa	54	17
Other	40	13
Scott's pi	37	11
Holsti	21	7
Krippendorf's alpha	13	4
Intraclass correlation coefficient	5	2
Pearson's coefficient	6	1
Cronbach's alpha	6	1
Potter and Levine coefficient	5	1
Note. Numbers in each category may add up to more than 441 due to multiple theories, media types, or topics included in a study.

TABLE 2 Comparison of Article Attributes Across Journal Discipline (n = 441)

	Health journals	Communication journals	Other journals
	(n = 138)	(n = 109)	(n = 194)
Theory used	38%	72%	57% ^d
Media type
Magazines	43%	26%	35% ^b
Television	25%	46%	27% ^c
Newspapers	34%	23%	28%
Movies	9%	8%	16%
Music	3%	5%	2%
Video games	1%	2%	1%
Topics ^a
Violence	11%	35%	19% ^d
Sex	4%	22%	21% ^d
Tobacco	26%	8%	10% ^d
Obesity/body image	14%	6%	20% ^c
Alcohol	16%	8%	7% ^b
Cancer	17%	6%	1% ^d
Aging	2%	6%	10% ^b
Reliability reported	56%	90%	69% ^d
Reliability by variable (n = 305)	44%	68%	60% ^c
Note. We used chi-square tests to identify differences across categories.
^aOnly the seven most frequent topics are listed in this table.
^bSignificant at p < .05.
^cSignificant at p < .01.
^dSignificant at p < .0001.

FIGURE 2 Number of health-related content analysis articles by journal discipline over time (1985–2005) (n = 441).