Documents: Secondary data

Question 1

What are the 3 types of document?

Answer 1

Public documents. Personal documents. Historical documents.

Question 2

What study can be linked to public documents?

Answer 2

The MacPhearson inquiry that found that the was institutionalised rascism within the police

Question 3

What’s an example of a study to do with personal documents?

Answer 3

Thomas and Zanieckis on polish immigration letters and documents

Question 4

What’s an example of a study to do with historical documents ?

Answer 4

Aries

Question 5

What was Aries study?

Answer 5

He was interested in how society had changed its perception of children from the middle ages to the present day. He used historic documents including paintings from historical periods of time to analyse how children were viewed.

Question 6

What was Scott’s 4 criteria for assessing documents as a method of research?

Answer 6

1. Authenticity. 2. Credibility 3. Representivness 4. Meaning

Question 7

What are 2 practical strengths of documents?

Answer 7

1. Acess alot of documents are available online. 2 Money documents only needed to be print out so are quite cheap to use.

Question 8

What are 2 practical limitations of documents?

Answer 8

1. Access, personal documents like diraries may be quite difficult to gain access too. 2. Background of researcher they may lose objectivity if the topic is personal to them so they may need skills to interpret and understand the documents.

Question 9

What are 2 ethical strengths of documents?

Answer 9

1. There’s no need to gain informed consent 2. There’s protection of participants as they can just change the name of individuals

Question 10

What are 2 ethical limitations of documents?

Answer 10

1. People might not always know their documents are being used in a study 2. Documents containing information ot pictures of children need to have consent as they are a vulnerable group.

Question 11

What are 2 theoretical strengths of documents?

Answer 11

1. It is valid as it may give depth and insight into a particular event or time period not obtainable by any other method. 2. Documents can provide Vestments as what life is like, especially historical.

Question 12

What are 2 theoretical limitations of documents?

Answer 12

1. If the documents are personal it may lose reliability as it would be hard to replicate 2. It may lack validity as it has hard to check the authenticy of some documents.

Question 13

What was Thomas and Zanieckis study into polish letters?

Answer 13

This was an interactionalist study of migration and social change which used a variety of documents. These included 764 letters written by Polish immigrations back to their families, they also analysed autobiographies, newspaper articles, court and social Work records. They used these to reveal the meaning individuals gave to their experience of migration and any event they might have been involved in

Question 14

What was Heys study and what happened in it?

Answer 14

Hey into school girl letters. She carried out a stidy about the formation and thoughts concerning school girl friendships. She used notes the girls passed to one another in lessons and their diaries. She gained the trust and friendship from the girls and even swapped her own personal diaries in order for the girls to share their thoughts.

Question 15

What did Stein speak about?

Answer 15

The use of the Internet as a secondary source.

Question 16

What did Stein argue ?

Answer 16

There is very little vetting of information on the Internet, there is no need fot submission of proposals to publishers and editors. For this reason, Internet sources should be used with caution. He says that you need to consider the: authorship, authority of the author, authority of the material, authority of the site or organisation, the currency (if its upto date and accurate) and the objectivity

Question 17

What’s content analysis?

Answer 17

A method of systematically dealing with the contents of documents. Iys often used to analyse the media. They usually consist of qualative data but content analysis allows this to be turned into quantative data.