Documents

• What is a document?

  A written text in paper or digital form
• What are the two types of documents?

  Public and personal
• What are public documents?

  Documents produced by charities, businesses, and government
• What are personal documents?

  Letters, diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies
• How can documents be expressive?

  They convey meanings, like a diary
• How can documents be formal?

  They are official documents
• Why do interpretivists prefer expressive documents?

  They provide qualitative data
• Who explored childhood in the Middle Ages?

  Philippe Aries
• What method did Aries use to explore childhood?

  He used portraits
• What did Aries show about childhood?

  It was socially constructed, not inevitable
• What is content analysis?

  A method to analyze communication systematically
• What is the purpose of content analysis?

  To understand meanings in communication
• What are the four criteria Scott suggests for judging documents?

  Authenticity, credibility, representativeness, meaning
• What does authenticity refer to in document analysis?

  The extent to which the document is genuine
• What does credibility refer to in document analysis?

  The extent to which the data is believable
• What does representativeness refer to in document analysis?

  The extent to which the document is typical
• What does meaning refer to in document analysis?

  The messages sent through the document
• What did the Glasgow Media Group analyze?

  Various sources of news media
• What did the Glasgow Media Group investigate?

  The nature of news reporting
• What did the Glasgow Media Group show about media?

  It represents political biases against immigrants
• What are the research must-haves in sociological research?

  • Representative
  • Reliable
  • Valid
  • Practical (Time and Money)
  • Ethical
  • Theoretical (Positivism and Interpretivism)
  • Triangulation (Using more than one method)
• What are the strengths of using documents as data sources?

  • Good source of qualitative data
  • Access to past information
  • Enables observation of changes over time
  • Might be the only information available
  • Easy to access
• What are the weaknesses of using documents as data sources?

  • Difficult to understand if old
  • Potentially fake documents
  • May contain lies, especially personal documents
  • Ethical issues regarding privacy