Topic 9 - Documents and MIC

Question 1

Types of documents

Answer 1

• Written texts - diaries, letters, emails etc
• Other texts - paitings, draeings, photographs etc
• Puplic documents - produces by governments, schools, welfare agencies etc
• Personal documents - facebook pages, letters, diaries etc
• Historical documents - public/personal documents created in the past

Question 2

Practical issues

Answer 2

• May be only available source of info
• Cheap source of large amounts of data
• Saves time
• Not always possible to gain access to them
• They created for their own purposes, not the sociologists- may not contain specific answers the sociologist is looking for

Question 3

Ethical issues

Answer 3

• Fewe ethical issues than primary method
• Use of organisations unpublished documents may raise ethical issues
• If public documents are leaked to researcher, informed consent hasnt been gained - however could be justified if the use of such data could serve the public interest

Question 4

Theoretical issues

Answer 4

• Preferred by interpretivists because it gives researcher a valid pic of actors meanings
• Thomas and Znaniecki (1919) - The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Interactionist study of migration and social change - used 764 documents to reveal the meanings individuals gave to their experience of migration
• Authentic statment of authors views as they are not written with the sociologist in mind
• May lack validity - John Scott (1990): identifies 3 reasons for this; can only be valid if it has authentic data, issue of credibility and the dnager of misinterpreting what the document meant to the author and audience

Question 5

Reliability

Answer 5

• Positivists say it’s an unreliable source of data
• They are not standardised
• Uniqueness undermines the representativeness and so is difficult to make generalisations

Question 6

Representativeness

Answer 6

• Some groups might not be represented in documents
• Evidence in the documents may not be typical of the evidence in ither documents we dont have access to: not all documents survive or are available

Question 7

Content analysis

Answer 7

• Method for dealing with the contents of a document especially by the mass media
• Two main types: formal/thematic

Question 8

Formal content analysis

Answer 8

• Documents are normally qualitative forms of data, formal contnent analysis allows us to quantify data
• Gil (1988) describes how formal content analysis might work: select representative sample of women magazine stories, decide what categories to use , study the stories and code the women into chosen categories, quantify how many in each category
• Preffered by positivists as it produces objective, representative, reliable, quantitative data and can ake generalisations
• Find trends over time
• Interpretivists criticse it for lack of validity
• Not as objective as positivists claim - creating categories and coding is sibjective

Question 9

Thematic analysis

Answer 9

• Qualitative analysis of media content - used by interpretivists and feminists
• Select small number of cases for an in depth analysis - aim is to uncover meanings that have been encoded in documents, uncovering authors ideological bias

Question 10

Criticisms of thematic analysis

Answer 10

• Doesnt attempt to obtain a representative sample.
• Tendency to select evidence that supports the hypothesis
• No proof the meaning the sociologist gives to document is true

Question 11

Methods in Context

Answer 11

• Used to investigate a number of educational issues: public/historical documents (ofsted reports, school policies and governers meeting), personal documents (teachers written reports

Question 12

Practical issues

Answer 12

• Cheaper and quicker, however may not be true of all types of documents. Some may be difficult to access and if produced by teachers or pupils, they my not want it put ‘in the spotlight’ and so deny access to the researcher

Question 13

Ethical issues

Answer 13

• Historical documents: no real ethical issues because they’re in public domain whcih can be accessed by others
• Personal documents: issue of consent
• Personal documents: issue of confidentiality - researcher must guarentee anonymity

Question 14

Theoretical issues

Answer 14

• Validity - personal docs provide insights and understanding for meanings, beliefs and behaviours held by teachers and students. However, personal docs are written with an audeince in mind and so may not provide a completely valid account
• Also the probkem of interpreting and understanding - researcher may not interpret accurately
• Representativeness - info in personal docs will often be based on personal experience of teacher/student meaning no generalisations can be made