Documents Flashcards
What is a public document
Documents that are accessible to the public
What are personal documents
Documents written by an individual for their own purposes
What are historical documents
Public or personal documents that are produced in the past
What studies will I use when taking about documents
Thomas and znaniecki
- they were interactionists who studied ‘ the polish peasant in Europe and America
- they brought 764 letters sent by people who migrated from Poland to Europe and America
-they accessed these documents by advertising in a polish newspaper in Chicago
-they also used social work records and newspaper articles to get a fuller picture
Valerie hey
- she studied the formation of school girl friendships
-she use notes the girls passed in lessons and their dairies
- hey gained the trust and friendship from the girls by swapping her own dairy in order to get the girls to share their thoughts
- she took the notes passed in lesson out of the bin after class
What is authenticity
Is the document what it claims to be or is it a fake
What is credibility
Is the document accurate for example the polish people in Thomas and znanieckis research may have lied in letters to stop family in Poland worrying
What is the practical strength of documents
Inexpensive- data is secondary so researcher doesn’t need as much time and money to generate the data
Access- some public docs may be easy to access e.g. ofsted reports and magazines
What is the practical disadvantage of documents
Access- some documents are difficult to access e.g. suicide notes from disstressed family or secret govt documents . There may be gatekeepers
What is the ethical strength of documents
No harm to ppts- due to the detached nature it means that there is no interactions with the researcher
What is the ethical weakness of documents
Sensitivity - researcher will need to be sensitive to families when accessing/ using personal docs e.g. suicide notes
What are the theoretical advantages of documents
Valid - personal docs aren’t written with the public in mind and so are honest
Verstehen- it’s possible to put yourself in the shoes of the person through personal insight e.g. t and z can find out about the migrants feelings
What are the theroretical disadvantages of documents
Subjective- researcher makes their own interpretations of the authors meanings which maybe wrong resulting in invalid data
Lacks representativeness - as personal documents only reflects an individual
Reliability- another researcher may interpret ate data very differently due to qualitative and subject nature so they wouldn’t get the same results
Validity -people may not be honest in personal documents e.g. t and z migrants may have wanted to spare family distress
What is content analysis
Method for dealing systematically with the content of documents
How does content analysis allow sociologists to produce quantitative data from qualitative documents
-decide on a theme to assess
-create categories
-count up the number appearing in each category (this can then be compared with official stats so see if the thing is under or over represented )
How do sociologists carry out qualitative content analysis
Just write down anything that they think is of interest to the study
