Documentary Approaches Flashcards
Primary material
Primary material is original ‘raw’ data, such as government reports, business records, the unprocessed results of an earlier survey, the tapes or transcripts of earlier interviews, and so on.
Secondary material
Secondary material refers to the books or articles which researchers have written, having analysed and interpreted their primary data.
Why use some documentary approaches? State general reasons
- All projects require context and justification, which will often go beyond a survey of secondary literature. You may wish to cite for example a national government or WHO report, or relevant mortality/morbidity data, to demonstrate the significance and utility of your proposed research.
- Existing published surveys or interview data may already be available through which to address your research question. There are obvious benefits in not ‘reinventing the wheel’, in using instruments whose reliability has been tested, and for which new ethical approval is not required. Also some researchers may simply prefer this approach to the direct personal interaction of other methods
Why use some documentary approaches? State Specific reasons
THREE SPECIFIC REASONS
- In some projects sensitivities or the concerns of vested interests may make it impossible to elicit direct information. Public health research into diseases of consumption and lifestyle exemplifies an adversarial area in which industrial interests may directly conflict with those of researchers, thus minimising co-operation.
Historical research relies heavily on documentary sources, for obvious reasons. Only when researching very recent events is it possible to use ‘oral history’ (ie. interviews, witness seminars), but even then problems of representativeness and reliability usually make triangulation with documentary records necessary.
- Research into health communication and promotion can encompass analysis of the content of visual and print media and of artefacts.
THE RANGE OF DOCUMENTARY SOURCES
Official publications Records produced by national and local government, and by international governing bodies. These contain both quantitative evidence [such as the population census, vital registration data (civil or religious) and economic statistics relevant to health and health systems] and qualitative material [reports, enquiries, ministerial or civil service records of policy-making].
Business / institutional records Records generated by private, non-governmental and academic institutions include ‘grey literature’ [eg. records of research and development, newsletters, working papers, bulletins, fact sheets, conference proceedings], management and administrative records, earlier research projects.
Printed records from commercial publishers: Newspapers, books and journals.
Personal records Letters, diaries, private papers and memorabilia (photos, scrapbooks, cuttings etc.).
Artefacts and visual media Visual material may include paper [maps, paintings, cartoons, illustrations, posters] and electronic formats [film, television, websites]. Artefacts which may be ‘read’ by health researchers range from medical or surgical instruments, uniforms, architecture of hospitals health centres
SEARCHING FOR DOCUMENTARY SOURCES
There is wide range of different repositories in which such sources are held. The national and local state needs to retain a ‘collective memory’ of legal and administrative decisions, so it is normal for public archives to be established at the level of nation, region or city to hold official records; over time these have also accumulated private and institutional papers. Specialist, general and academic libraries contain published sources and archival material and visual media: examples relevant to health research include the Wellcome Library and the National Library of Medicine, and the LSHTM Library and Archives is also discussed. Finally firms, organisations and individuals may retain collections of grey literature, administrative records and private papers. The extent to which archives have been catalogued to aid researchers varies markedly. Within high-income countries business and institutional records are often haphazardly stored, while in some less economically advanced nations, or states with no tradition of public accountability and transparency, even official archives can be hard to use.
Online searching: using US and UK examples we may consider the potential of online search tools, while emphasizing that hand searching of indexes and ledgers may be necessary.
Digitisation: again this varies from sophisticated and comprehensive [such as the tobacco documents online, the US Census Bureau, Great Britain Historical Statistics, Wellcome Images etc.] to the nonexistent!
Consider the source
Preliminary considerations First provenance: having identified a document of potential utility we should first consider when, why and by whom it was produced and whether it is genuine. This establishes validity and gives preliminary indicators of the perspective of the document’s author. Second, the fragmentary nature of sources: any collection of records, even official government papers will not be comprehensive, but reflect earlier decisions (or acts of chance) which determine whether or not they are archived, and whether they then survive. This problem has become more intense in recent years as, for example, evidence about health policy is recorded not on paper, but in emails, electronic minutes, websites etc. Researchers need to be conscious of this selective deposit and survival. How does it limit the questions we may ask? How do we fill the gaps by introducing other sources?
Texts can only be understood when a full grasp of the context in which they were produced has been established. We also need to avoid making large claims based on limited sources. In Stacy Carter’s words, the documentary researcher needs to be a ‘Conductor’, not a ‘Conduit’ (see reading).
So for example, historians are concerned to distinguish the witting and unwitting evidence contained in a document: the former refers to comprehension of the information it contains and its intended meaning; the latter refers to unintended information we may glean, for example about social attitudes, prejudices or power dynamics.
Triangulation Working with documentary sources means constructing an argument from fragmentary evidence, and viewing social reality through the eyes of others. Documents therefore require careful contextualisation against other sources – data triangulation to corroborate evolving interpretation.
Document
The term ‘document’ generally implies a text on paper, but the lecture will consider documentary evidence in its broadest sense. Thus the term encapsulates not just printed or handwritten material, but also any other artefact, such as different types of visual or audio media, which might be used in health research. A document may also be a source of quantitative or qualitative information. It is important to distinguish two broad categories of documentary material: primary and secondary.
Preliminary considerations
First provenance: having identified a document of potential utility we should first consider when, why and by whom it was produced and whether it is genuine. This establishes validity and gives preliminary indicators of the perspective of the document’s author. Second, the fragmentary nature of sources: any collection of records, even official government papers will not be comprehensive, but reflect earlier decisions (or acts of chance) which determine whether or not they are archived, and whether they then survive. This problem has become more intense in recent years as, for example, evidence about health policy is recorded not on paper, but in emails, electronic minutes, websites etc. Researchers need to be conscious of this selective deposit and survival. How does it limit the questions we may ask? How do we fill the gaps by introducing other sources?
Witting and unwitting analysis
witting and unwitting evidence contained in a document: the former refers to comprehension of the information it contains and its intended meaning; the latter refers to unintended information we may glean, for example about social attitudes, prejudices or power dynamics. At minimum this necessitates inference about the perspectives, bias and assumptions of the author; however health researchers have also drawn on techniques of discourse analysis used in literary and linguistic theory, which examines how social reality is constructed through language.
Triangulation
Working with documentary sources means constructing an argument from fragmentary evidence, and viewing social reality through the eyes of others. Documents therefore require careful contextualisation against other sources – data triangulation to corroborate evolving interpretation.
