Documents

Question 1

What are documents?

Answer 1

• a form of secondary qualitative data which can include public or private media documents

Question 2

What are some practical strengths of documents?

Answer 2

• they are cheap and easy to access
• can be used to study changing social interests over time
• can provide an insight to the past

Question 3

What are some theoretical strengths of documents?

Answer 3

• presumed to be highly valid
• personal documents are high in verstehen as they are written from the writers viewpoint
• media and public documents may represent social issues which were important at particular times
• documents can be studied using content analysis, which is a reliable method as it involves counting themes
• documents can also be studied using thematic analysis to understand meaning

Question 4

What are some practical limitations to documents?

Answer 4

• some documents, particularly personal ones may be hard to access
• may contain large amounts of irrelevant information

Question 5

What are some theoretical limitations of documents?

Answer 5

• documents may lack validity as they may not be authentic
• there is the possibility that the author has lied or exaggerated, reduces validity
• the researcher can misinterpret the documents content
• documents are regarded as lacking in reliability
• the information from documents cannot be generalised to the wider population, they only really represent the views of the author
• content analysis does not tell us about the “meaning” of documents
• thematic analysis can lead to biased interpretation of information