Documents Flashcards
(14 cards)
What are Documents?
Refers to any written text such as Personal and public.
What are Personal documents?
Such as letters, diaries and autobiographies
What are Public documents?
such as reports from governments.
What are Practical advantages of Documents?
Public ( cheap and access avaliable).
Personal ( cheap and save’s researcher time)
Historical documents used to study past)
What are Practical disadvantages of Documents?
Personal documents are going to be hard to access Historical documents ( words can change over time, some documents could be lost or damaged)
What are ethical advantages of documents
Public docs are anonymous
What is a ethical disadvantage of documents?
Immoral to go through personal documents
What is a Reliable disadvantage of documents?
Positivists would argue that documents are unstandardised and unreliable as it is unique.
What are Validity advantages of documents?
Historical - there the only documents you have.
What are 3 Validity disadvantages of documents?
1) Public docs may be fake news
2) When analyzing personal documents it takes skills and uses a lot of interpretation creating bias,
3) Personal documents might have missing pages.
What is a Representative advantage of Public documents?
Public docs more representative as government have access to every school.
What are 2 Representative disadvantages of Representative documents?
1) Personal documents ( not representative)
2) Some information from documents might not be typical, if not we don’t know if it is safe to make generalizations.
Who favours documents?
Interpretivists because they gain an insight into what individuals were thinking (versthen)
Why don’t positivists like documents?
Not reliable and representative.
