Content analysis of archival data.

Content analysis can be a particularly suitable method for measuring cognitive variables from archived texts. Although content analysis has been underused by clinical psychologists, there are many benefits to this strategy. Longitudinal studies can be conducted retrospectively, the range of possible research participants can be expanded to include individuals otherwise unavailable (e.g., the famous or the dead), existing data sets can be used and reused to answer new questions, and studies across cultures and across levels of analysis (individual vs. group) can be facilitated. To illustrate the use and usefulness of content analysis to measure cognitive variables, the authors focus on the examples of causal attributions and integrative complexity, describing past research and sketching future applications to clinical research and practice.