Documents

• Both case studies and life histories are favoured by interpretivist researchers and tend to yield qualitative data.
• Documents 


  • A case study is an in-depth investigation of a single example.
  • For example, Willis’s study of specific counter-school sub-cultures tried to explore using interviews at schools why children from certain social backgrounds got certain types of jobs.
• Life Histories 


  • Life histories are specific kind of case study that looks at the overall life of one individual or small group, often using in-depth unstructured interviews supported by personal documents, such as diaries and letters.
• Advantages 


  • They can be useful to test wider theories, such as working class boys’ attitudes towards education.
  • They can be useful for generating new hypotheses or testing in further research or as an adjunct to other types of research.
• Advantages 


  • They provide more valid in-depth detail and understanding from the point of view of the individual or group than can be obtained by positivist methods such as surveys and questionnaires.
• Disadvantages


  • They are not representative of the larger population, so findings cannot be generalised.
  • They may not be valid; life histories, for example, view the past from the standpoint of the present and facts might be misremembered.