Data Mining Methods for the Content Analyst

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OBTAINING AND PREPARING DATA

The first step in any content analysis project is to obtain the data to be analyzed and perform any necessary preprocessing to ready it for analysis. Data collection is often regarded as the easiest step of the entire analytical process, yet it is actually one of the most complex, with the quality of the collection and preparation processes impacting every other stage of the project. Issues such as ensuring the data sample is meaningful and data preparation tasks like cleaning and filtering are all critical concepts which are often overlooked. This chapter provides a basic introduction to the issues surrounding data collection and preparation, with a few words on advanced topics, like the integration of multimedia ...