Documents

Question 1

Give some examples of personal documents, including a study

Answer 1

Diaries, bank statements, letters, photo albums
school reports, notes

Hey: notes from girls around a classroom being taken out of a bin. This was unethical as there was no consent for them to be used as research

Lobban: Gender roles in reading schemes

Question 2

What are the practical, ethical and theoretical strengths of personal documents?

Answer 2

Practical: Quick and cheap

Ethical: N/A

Theoretical: Valid, gains verstehen

Question 3

What are the practical, ethical and theoretical limitations of personal documents?

Answer 3

Practical: Difficult to access, might not be relevant information, colloquialisms and language problems

Ethical: Consent may be difficult or impossible

Theoretical: Unreliable and lacks representativeness

Question 4

Give examples of public documents and a study that uses them

Answer 4

Ofsted reports
Minutes from school reports

McRobbie: did a content analysis and compared girls’ magazines in the 1970s and 1990s. In the ‘70s girls magazines emphasised the importance of getting married. The ‘90s magazines showed women as more independent and assertive. Their representation changed from a focus on getting married to being assertive and having a career

Question 5

What are the practical strengths and limitations of public documents?

Answer 5

Strengths: Quick, easy to access

Limitations: May not be relevant data, dark figures

Question 6

What are the theoretical strengths and limitations of public documents?

Answer 6

Strengths: Reliable, Representative and cause and effect

Limitations: Lack of validity; not true picture

Question 7

What is a thematic analysis?

Answer 7

A general analysis of a document

Question 8

What is a content analysis?

Answer 8

A quantified (specific analysis of key words) analysis of a document