secondary data - personal documents

• What does the term document refer to?

  Any written text
• Can you name an example of a document?

  Personal diaries
• What are some examples of documents?

  • Personal diaries
  • Government reports
  • Medical records
  • Novels
  • Newspapers
  • Letters
  • Emails
  • Blogs
  • Web pages
  • Parish registers
  • Train timetables
  • Shopping lists
  • Bank statements
• What does text also refer to beyond written documents?

  • Paintings
  • Drawings
  • Photographs
  • Maps
  • Sounds and images (film, television, radio)
• What are public documents?

  Produced by organizations like governments
• Give an example of a public document.

  OFSTED reports
• What are personal documents?

  Produced by individuals, first-person accounts
• Name an example of a personal document.

  Diaries
• What are historical documents?

  Documents created in the past
• Give an example of a historical document.

  Parish records
• What are the four types of documents discussed?

  • Public documents
  • Personal documents
  • Historical documents
• What is the significance of the Black Report (1980)?

  It highlighted health inequalities
• Who conducted a study using personal documents in 1919?

  Thomas and Znaniecki
• What did Thomas and Znaniecki study?

  Migration and social changes
• What type of documents did Peter Laslett use in his study?

  Parish records
• What did Michael Anderson study using historical documents?

  Child labour and family structure
• What did Phillipe Aries study?

  Child-rearing manuals and paintings
• What are Scott's four criteria for assessing documents?

  1. Credibility
  2. Representativeness
  3. Authenticity
  4. Meaning
• What does credibility assess in a document?

  Believability and sincerity of the author
• What does representativeness refer to in document assessment?

  Typicality of evidence for generalization
• What does authenticity check in a document?

  If the document is what it claims to be
• Why is meaning important in document assessment?

  Special skills may be needed to understand
• How do positivists and interpretivists view documents?

  Positivists:

  • Reject due to reliability and representativeness

  
  

  Interpretivists:

  • Favor for achieving validity
• Why do positivists reject personal documents?

  They are unstandardized and unreliable
• What is a reason interpretivists use personal documents?

  They provide authentic statements of views
• What are the advantages of using documents in sociological research?

  1. Rich qualitative data
  2. Only source for studying the past
  3. Extra check on primary methods
  4. Cost-effective and time-saving
• What is formal content analysis?

  • A quantitative approach to analyzing media content
  • Involves developing a classification system
• What is the first step in content analysis?

  Decide on categories to use
• What did Lobban (1974) analyze using content analysis?

  Gender roles in children's reading schemes
• What did Tuchman (1978) analyze using content analysis?

  TV portrayals of women
• What are the practical issues of content analysis?

  + Cheap

  + Easy to access

  • Time-consuming
• What are the theoretical issues of content analysis?

  + Reliable

  • Open to interpretation

  + Useful for objective data

  • Lacks meaning analysis
• How do positivists view content analysis?

  As a source of objective, quantitative data
• How do interpretivists view content analysis?

  As merely counting without meaning