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External validity was established by looking at one of the biggest sport organizations In the world.
external validity was also strengthened because posts were analyzed from an entire season (about 6 months). By looking at posts throughout the entire season, the researchers were able to see what call to action remained consistent, which ones generated the most likes, and which ones were unique based on events happening at a certain point in time.
The third way the researcher established external validity is by sampling content with a variety of characteristics. There were 100 posts with a call to action and 100 posts without. This lets the researchers obtain a better sample of what the NFL’s Instagram feed typically looks like.
The researcher ensured that the codebook and codesheet were fit to measure what it was intended to measure. Accordingly, the researchers ensured that the operational definitions were correct and accurately described what needed to be measured in each coding category. The codebook and codesheet were designed to answer R1, R2, and H1. Internal validity was weakened by not accounting for certain aspects of Instagram posts that could have been coded. For example, there could have been more coding categories regarding caption/ copy details, but this did not immensely impact the results of the study.
Another way the researchers strengthened the study's internal validity was by ensuring inter-coder reliability. The second coder coded 10% of the study population (20 posts). For the 20 posts that the second coder measured, the agreeability score was 90%.
Limitations
Limitations
The NFL is often grouped within the big four of professional sport organizations, which include Major League Baseball (MLB), National Hockey League (NHL), and the National Basketball Association (NBA). Each of these professional organizations has a major following on Instagram, like the NFL. The NFL has 27.4 million followers, the MLB has 9.7 million followers, the NBA has 78.6 million followers, and the NHL has 5.9 million followers. These professional organizations often use call-to-action messaging as well to target fans and advise them to watch, stream, click, or buy some form of content. However, it is hard to generalize because each organization is different and so are the fans. Sports fans like other communities are different depending on what they are watching and what they are interested in. This could impact the way these organizations strategize their social media marketing, and could change the way they use call to action messaging on various social media platforms. But, sports fans will always be passionate about sports content. This would allow the researcher to generalize that posts featuring sports related media content like game highlights, live game content, or player highlights would increase engagement metrics because it is part of the reason why people watch sports.
Some limitations the researcher ran into was that Instagram does not reveal share counts for regular photos or photo/video carousel, so the only shares they could see were for reels. This made it difficult for the researchers to interpret the posts that had shares because there needed to be more data to compare it to. Another technology factor that the researcher did not take into account when constructing the study was that Instagram has been updating, and some people don’t see the number of likes on posts. Another limitation Is that occasionally the researcher felt they did not have the right coding category to code content, and needed to fit It Into another category. While this did not majorly Impact the results, it would have made the results stronger If there was a more detailed codebook .
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