Secondary sources-Documents

Question 1

Wht are Documents

Answer 1

Documents refer to wriiten text like personal diaries ,government reports ,newspapers,lettersw, emails

Question 2

Public documents

Secondary soruce of data collection

Answer 2

Produced by organisation such as government departments,schools,welfare agencies,charities
It includes documents such as Ofsted reports of school inspection

Question 3

Personal documents-Primary source of data collection

Answer 3

Items such as letters,diaries,photo albums
First person accounts of social events & personal experiences
Personal documents reveal meanings individuals give to their experience
of events

Question 4

Historical documents

Answer 4

A personal or public documents created in past

Question 5

(scott)Assessing documents
Four criteria to follow

Answer 5

1. Authenticity-is the document what it claims to be
2. Credibility-Is the document believable,is auther sincere
3. Representativeness-Is document typical -is it safe to generalise to others
4. meaning-researchers may need specialist skills to understand document

Question 6

Advantages of documents

Answer 6

• Personal documents-diaries & letters enable researcher to get closer to scial actors reality,giving insight through rich detailed qualitative data -Interpretivists favour them
• Documents sometimes only source of info for studying past
• Cheap source of datas -somone else has already gathered info

Question 7

Content analysis

Answer 7

Method for dealing systematically with context of documents
Best known for its use in analysing documents produced by mass media -such as television news or advertisements
Although such documents are qualittative,context analysis enables socioligts to produce quantitative data
how contextnt analysis works:

Question 8

Advanatges of content analysis

Answer 8

• It is cheap
• Easy to find sources of material in the form of newspaper,television,
• Positivists see it as a usefu;l source of objective,Quantitative scientific data

Question 9

Methodological perspectives of documents

Answer 9

• Interpretivists favour documents because achieves their main goal of balidity
• Positivists reject documents fails to achieve their main goal of reliability,representativeness & generalisability

Question 10

Why do positivists reject documents

Answer 10

• Often unstandardised & unreliable e.g each persons diary is unique -difficult to generalise from them
• Often unrepresentative-only literate groups can write diaries & letters
• in interpreting documents researcher may impose their own meanings
• However positivuists do use content anlysis on documents to produce quantitative data instead

Question 11

Why do interpetivists favour documents

Answer 11

• They are not usually written with research in mind-authentic
• Provide qualitative data that gives insight into authors world views & meanings