Compare methods

	Content Analysis of Treaties	Qualitative Content Analysis
Field	International Relations	Qualitative Research
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2000	1980
Originator	Klaus Krippendorff (content analysis methodology); legalization literature (Abbott et al.)	Klaus Krippendorff; refined by Margrit Schreier
Type	Systematic coding of the text and design features of international agreements	Method
Seminal source	Hayes, A. F., & Krippendorff, K. (2007). Answering the call for a standard reliability measure for coding data. Communication Methods and Measures, 1(1), 77–89.	Krippendorff, K. (1980). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage Publications.
Aliases	Treaty Text Analysis, International Agreement Coding, Treaty Design Content Analysis, Legalization Content Analysis	Content Analysis, Categorical Content Analysis
Related	3	2
Summary	Content analysis of treaties is the systematic, rule-governed coding of the text and design features of international agreements — their obligations, precision, delegation, enforcement, flexibility, and substantive provisions — to study how treaties are written and what explains variation in their design. It applies the established content-analysis methodology codified by Krippendorff to the specialized vocabulary of international law and institutions, often organized around frameworks such as the legalization concept of Abbott and colleagues (2000).	Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) is a systematic, inductive method for analyzing textual or visual data by identifying and categorizing meaning units into content categories. Developed and formalized by Klaus Krippendorff (1980), QCA can be purely qualitative (inductive, exploratory) or combined with quantitative counting; it analyzes manifest content (explicit, surface meanings) and latent content (underlying, interpretive meanings).