In addition, a number of songs appeared on the charts for more than one genre. Music industry charts were used to establish the lists of top songs for the various categories. Describing substance portrayals in movies, which are visual and verbal, and music lyrics, which are only verbal, required different procedures. Coders were instructed to ignore medicines administered to patients by medical personnel in a hospital or other settings. Also excluded were fictitious drugs and substances with unrealistic, seemingly impossible effects, such as transforming one character into another, or permitting a character to experience other people's memories.
All content analyses are fundamentally concerned with counting and describing particular content.
In this study, counting procedures differentiated substance use from substance appearance . In either case, the counting procedure provided a conservative estimate of substance use, since it did not include every verbal reference. In addition to counting the proportion of movies in which substances appeared, coding procedures attempted to describe dominant messages about substance use. Conveyed pro-use messages by expressing desire or longing, or advocating positive attributes of substances and their use. Modeled anti-use behavior by including characters that expressly refused offers to drink, smoke, or take drugs, or by statements that emphasized rules that govern use or characterize use or users in negative ways.