A study of quantitative content analysis of health messages in U.S. media from 1985 to 2005

Content analysis is a research method that was traditionally utilized by communication scholars, but as the study of media messages has grown, scholars in other fields have increasingly relied on the methodology. This paper reports on a systematic review of studies using quantitative content analysis methods to examine health messages in the mass media, excluding the Internet, from 1985 to 2005. We searched for health-related content analysis studies published in peer-reviewed journals, identifying 441 articles meeting inclusion criteria. We examined article attributes including theories used, topics, media type, and intercoder reliability measures, and looked at differences over time. Our findings show that studies focusing on health-related messages increased from 1985 to 2005. During this time, studies primarily examined magazines, television, and newspapers, with an emphasis on topics related to substance use, violence, sex, and obesity and body image. Results suggest that studies published in communication journals are significantly more likely to include intercoder reliability data and theory discussion. We recommend that all publications, regardless of discipline or impact factor, request the inclusion of intercoder reliability data reported for individual variables, and suggest that authors address theoretical concepts when appropriate. We also encourage authors to include the term "content analysis," as well as media type and health topic studied, as keywords to make it easier to locate articles of interest when conducting literature searches.