Documents

• Documents :

  • Refers to any written text: personal diaries
  • government reports
  • medical records
  • newspapers
  • letters
  • parish registers
• Documents :

  • Can also include sounds + images from :
  • film
  • tv
  • radio
  • internet
• Public Documents :

  • Produced by organisations :
  • government departments
  • schools
  • welfare agencies
  • businesses
  • Charities
• Examples of public documents :

  • Ofsted reports
  • minutes of council meetings
  • company accounts
  • records of parliamentary debates
  • official reports
  • Eg - the Black Report (1980) into inequalities in health
• Personal Documents :

  • These are first person accounts of social events
  • personal experiences
  • generally include the writer’s feelings + attitudes
• Personal Documents examples:

  • Letters
  • diaries
  • photo albums
  • autobiographies
• Personal Documents Eg :

  • Thomas & Znanieki (1919) Migration + Change
  • Used letters from Polish immigrants + news articles
• Historical Documents :

  • A personal / public document from the past
• Historical Documents examples :

  • Laslett – Used parish records to study family structure in pre industrial England
• Historical Documents examples :

  • Anderson – Used the 1851 census to study family structure
• Historical Documents examples :

  • Harevan – Used employee files to study Canadian migration
• Historical Documents examples :

  • Aries – Used child rearing manuals + paintings to study childhood
• Assessing Documents :

  • Scott (1990) puts forward 4 criteria evaluating documents :
  • Authenticity
  • Credibility
  • Representativeness
  • Meaning
• Authenticity :

  • Is the document what it claims to be?
  • Are there any parts missing?
  • Is it likely to contain errors?
  • Who actually wrote it? (Hitler diaries were proven to be fakes)
• Credibility :

  • Is the document believable?
  • Was the author sincere? (Politicians Eg - often inflate their own importance)
  • Is it accurate? (soon after the incident/ many years later)
• Representativeness :

  • Is the evidence typical?
  • Is it safe to generalise? (Not all documents survive + not all documents are publically available)
  • Are certain groups not represented (the illiterate)
• Meaning :

  • Does the researcher need special skills to understand the document? (Translation from another language + words change meaning over time)
  • Will all sociologists interpret it in the same way?
• Advantages of documents :

  • Gets the sociologist close to reality (+Interpretivists)
  • Often the only source due to historical nature
  • Provide a check on any primary data
  • Cheap source of data
  • Can save sociologist time
• Content analysis :

  • A way of dealing systematically with the content of documents
  • Allows the sociologist to create quantitative data out of qualitative data
  • Gill (1988) - Portrayal of people in the media

  1. Decide categories such as employee, housewife etc
  2. Log the sources such as magazine,television.
  3. Compare findings between sources + link to data Eg - female employment figures
• Advantages of content analysis :

  • Cheap
  • Usually easy to find sources Eg - news articles
  • Positivists like the ability to create quantitative data (Interpretivists would say that counting up numbers does not give any meaning)