Documents

• What are the types of documents?

  • Public documents
  • Personal documents
  • Historical documents
• Where do public documents come from?

  • government departments
  • schools
  • businesses
  • internet
• What are examples of personal documents?

  • letters
  • diaries
  • autobiographies
  • photobooks
• What are personal documents?


  first hand accounts of social events and experiences
• What did Thomas and Znaniecki's do?


  Study migration and social change through the publication of 'The Polish Peasant' (1919)
• What was the goal of Thomas and Znaniecki?


  Reveal the and interpretations that individuals gave to their experience of migration
• How many letters did Thomas and Znaniecki get?


  764 after an advertisement in a Chicago newspaper
• What are historical documents?


  Personal or public info from the past
• What is are example of historical records being used?

  Peter Laslett, Anne Franke's Diary
• What did Peter Laslett do?


  Use parish records to study family structure in pre industrial England
• What does CRAM stand for?

  • Credibility
  • Representativeness
  • Authenticity
  • Meaning
• Who created CRAM?


  John Scott
• What is credibility?


  Whether or not a source is believable
• What is representativeness?


  Whether or not a doc is typical enough to generalise from
• What is authenticity?


  Whether the doc what it claims to be with no errors
• What is meaning in CRAM?


  What the doc actually means to the researcher and the intended audience
• What is content analysis?


  The researcher codifying or thematically analysing a written piece of work
• What are the advantages of content analysis?

  • cheap
  • easy to find sources
• What are the disadvantages of content analysis?


  counting the number of times something happens or someone says something does not provide meaning