DOCUMENTS

Question 1

Documents:

Answer 1

• (Any written text like diaries, emails, or government reports. These include public documents (produce by organisations like schools, and is often available to the public for research- they also include
• official reports of public inquires like the Black Report (1980) into inequalities in health), personal documents (items like letter or diaries that are often first-person accounts- a famous study included
• Thomas & Znaniecki’s 1919 study of migration and social change (The Polish Peasant in Europe and America) where they used personal documents (around 764 letters) to reveal the meanings individuals gave to their experiences of migration)
• and historical documents (personal or public document created in the past, such as Aries who used paintings of children and child-rearing manuals to draw his conclusions).)

Question 2

Scott (Assessing Documents)-

Answer 2

• Denotes four criteria’s: authenticity, credibility, representativeness, and meaning. A sociologists needs to check if a document is missing anything, or if it’s a replica check that there are no errors. Who wrote it needs to be checked as well, as documents like ‘Hitler Diaries’ were later proven to be fake. It also needs to be believable and sincere, e.g. some politicians may write diaries specifically intended for the public to see so might not be credible, or in Thomas & Znaniecki’s study these immigrants may have lied to justify their move. Accuracy needs to be checked, especially when it was written. When making generalisations, it’s also important to check if the document in ‘typical’, e.g. if ones such as these are the typical ones to survive. It’s also important to note that certain groups may be over-represented too, like the literate/ better educated.

Question 3

Eval (Interpretivist, Advantages)-

Answer 3

Personal documents like diaries and letters enable the researcher to get close to the social actor’s reality, giving insight through their richly detailed qualitative data. Sometimes documents are the only source of information for things like the past, making them vital. Also, by providing another source of data, documents often offer an extra check on results obtained by primary methods. They are also cheap as someone else has already gathered the information, which saves time too.

Question 4

Gill (Content Analysis)-

Answer 4

• Method of dealing systematically with the contents of documents, often helping to analyse documents produced by the mass media, like television news or advertisements.
• This method allows quantitative data from these sources.
• The method works by deciding what categories we are going to use (e.g. employee), then studying the source, and placing the characters into said categories. We can then count up the number in each category, and compare how often something occurs (e.g. how many woman are portrayed in the media as full-time housewives rather than employed).
• This can then be compared with official stats, and has been used by sociologists like** Gaye and Tuchman to analyse television’s portrayal of woman (in which they found that females were portrayed in limited and stereotypical roles).**

Question 5

Eval (Positivist, Advantages)-

Answer 5

• Content analysis is cheap and sources used are usually easy to find, especially if they’re newspapers or television broadcasts. Positivists also see it as a good way to gain objective, scientific, quantitative data.