Documents

Question 1

What are Public Documents?

Answer 1

Produced by organisations such as the Government,businesses, charities etc.
Some output may be used for sociological use (offsted reports etc.)

Question 2

What are Personal Documents?

Answer 2

First person accounts of social events and personal experiences that generally include the writers feelings and attitudes.
(Letters diaries etc. )

Question 3

What are Historical Documents? (Study)

Answer 3

Can be either personal or public. If we want to study past these are usually the only source of info.
ARIES used paintings of children and child-rearing manuals in his study of childhood

Question 4

Assessing Documents (4 criteria)

Answer 4

SCOTT argues that when it comes to assessing documentary sources, must use 4 criteria for evaluating

-Authenticity :is it what it claims to be?
-Credibility:Is the document believable?
-Representativeness: Is the evidence in the document typical?
-Meaning: Diff sociologists interpret thing’s different

Question 5

Advantages of documents (2)

Answer 5

-They allow sociologists to get up close to the social actors reality (rich detailed and qualitative data).

-Cheap source of data + time efficient

Question 6

Content Analysis

Answer 6

A method for dealing systematically with the contents of documents, it is commonly used in analysing media documents such as the news or advertisements. (Produce/ quantitate data)

Question 7

Content Analysis

Answer 7

A method for dealing systematically with the contents of documents, it is commonly used in analysing media documents such as the news or advertisements. (Produce/ quantitate data)

Question 8

Content Analysis Study (TUCHMAN)

Answer 8

TUCHMAN used it to analyse TV’s portrayal of women, and found that women were portrayed in a limited number of stereotypical roles.

Question 9

Advantages of Content Analysis

Answer 9

-cheap and easy to find sources of material
-Positivists see it as a useful source of objective, quantitative, scientific data.

Question 10

Advantages of Content Analysis

Answer 10

-cheap and easy to find sources of material
-Positivists see it as a useful source of objective, quantitative, scientific data.

Question 11

Disadvantages of Content Analysis (1)

Answer 11

-Interpretivists would argue that simply counting up the numbers of times something appears in a document tells us nothing about its meaning