documents (secondary data)

Question 1

give 3 examples of written texts used as documents to research

Answer 1

government reports
letters
diaries

Question 2

give 3 examples of non-written texts used as documents to research

Answer 2

paintings/drawings
photos
clothes

Question 3

give the 3 document types used by sociologists

Answer 3

public documents: produced by organisations/government (e.g. OFSTED reports, passports)

personal documents: provide first person accounts of events/experiences (e.g. letters, diaries, autobiographies)

historical documents: documents to study the past (personal and public documents created in the past, e.g. census records)

Question 4

why do interpretivists favour documents as a way of research?

Answer 4

as they tend to achieve the main interpretivist goal of validity because documents are qualitative so they provide an insight as they are authentic

Question 5

give 2 theoretical disadvantages with using documents in research

Answer 5

• sociologist may misinterpret meanings of document by imposing their own meanings on document
• many groups are not represented in personal documents since they cannot write (illiterate or children)

Question 6

why do positivists dislike using documents as research?

Answer 6

they regard documents as unreliable sources of data since they’re not complied in a standardised format

Question 7

give 2 theoretical advantages with using documents in research

Answer 7

• allows massive insight into peoples lives and helps to understand the feelings and motives in their behaviour
• documents aren’t written with sociologist in mind so they are likely to be an authentic statement of the author’s views

Question 8

give 1 practical advantage with using documents in research

Answer 8

• they’re free/or cheap sources of large amounts of information (as they are secondary data)

Question 9

give 2 practical disadvantages with using documents in research

Answer 9

• individuals or organisations produce documents for their own purposes, so they often don’t include information the sociologist is looking for in particular
• may not always be possible to gain access to documents

Question 10

give an ethical advantage and disadvantage with using documents in research

Answer 10

+ have less ethical problems than many primary methods because the sociologist isn’t directly in contact with research subjects

• if the person is deceased there’s a danger of exploitation and lack of consent

Question 11

briefly explain the 4 criteria suggested by Scott (1990) to evaluate documents effectively/carefully

Answer 11

• authenticity: how genuine a document is. 2 aspects of authenticity are: soundness ( a complete and reliable document) and authorship (who it was written by)
• credibility: amount of distortion in a document/accuracy of document
• representativeness: how relevant it is to the sample population.
  2 factors affecting it are: survival (depends on how they are stored and detiroaration with age making them unuseable) and availability (some are deliberately withheld from researchers and public)
• meaning: the ability of researcher to understand the documents (may be in a foreign language). interpretivists have to understand what the document actually signifies which is difficult

Question 12

briefly explain Gilborn’s (1995) study of using documents to investigate racism in education
- also explain the issue of representativeness in his study

Answer 12

accessed a wide range of school documents ( school policy statements and local authority guidelines on anti- racism and the staff meeting minutes)
from these he was able to see the ‘official picture’ of what was happening, he then compared this with the data he collected from interviews and observation

• unrepresentative as it is only for racism in 1 school and not of how it is dealt with in all schools

Question 13

briefly explain Gerwirtz et al (1995) study of using documents to investigate marketization in education
- also explain practical advantage and validity issue of his study

Answer 13

found that school brochures/prospectuses were a useful free source of information about how schools presents themselves in the education marketplace.

• practical method as brochures are easy to get hold of
• validity issues as brochures don’t show true picture as the school tries to make their school appeal and not show the truth behind their school

Question 14

briefly explain Hey’s (1997) study of using documents to investigate education
- also explain the ethical and reliability issues

Answer 14

used notes girls passed to each-other in class to understand their friendship patterns, however note weren’t always easy to obtain as girls were experts at hiding them from a teacher

-ethical issues regarding invasion pf privacy of personal notes
- reliability issues regarding the notes being unique to that time/place/situation and they won’t write the same note twice

Question 15

briefly explain content analysis and how it differs from traditional analysis

Answer 15

secondary method favoured by positivists

it deals systematically with the content of documents to produce quantitative data from qualitative content

differs from traditional analysis as the researcher is looking for patterns and recurring ideas throughout the content

Question 16

4 step process described by Gill (1988) on how content analysis works

Answer 16

1) decide on your area of study
2) decide on the categories of that area that you’re going to be searching for
3) study the source material (e.g. newspaper and tally amount of times you find each instance)
4) count up the number in each category and draw out your conclusions

you can also then go onto compare findings with official stats to get a broader pool of data

Question 17

briefly explain Tuchman’s (1978) study using content analysis

Answer 17

used content analysis to study the portrayal of women in television and found they are stereotyped in the media across a variety of roles

Question 18

give 2 advantages of using content analysis

Answer 18

easily accessible and cheap

positivists see it as a useful source of objective and quantitative data

Question 19

give 2 disadvantages of using content analysis

Answer 19

interpretivists argue counting up how many times something appears in the media tells us nothing about its meaning (lacks depth)

categorising involves subjective interpretation