The main objective of content analysis is to analyze information whose format has been transformed into one that is useful. This constitutes step 6 and involves l summarizing the coded data,
. discovering patterns and relationships within the data,
. testing hypotheses about the patterns and relationships, and
l relating the results to data obtained from other methods or situations or from assessing the validity of the analysis.
Neither these tasks nor the analytical techniques for accomplishing them are unique to content analysis. Depending on the coding design, an analyst can use a variety of statistical methods.