Secondary Data: Documents Flashcards
(10 cards)
Qualitative secondary sources
Contain non-numerical data. These can be in the form of diaries, letters, documents, reports etc
Public documents
Public documents are produced by organisations such as government departments, schools, welfare agencies, businesses and charities
Personal documents
Include items such as letters, diaries, photo albums and autobiographies. These are first-person accounts of social events and personal experiences, and they generally also include the writers feelings and attitudes
Historical documents
Personal or public document created in the past
Scott puts forward 4 criteria he focuses on when assessing documents as methods of research:
1) authenticity- is the document what is claims to be? Are there missing pages and is it a copy? Is it free from errors? Who actually wrote the document?
2) credibility- is the document believable? Was the author sincere? Politicians may write diaries intended for publication that inflate their own importance
3) representativeness- is it typical of population at that time? Is it generalisable?
4) meaning- researcher may need special skills to understand the document
PET issues with documents
P+
- access (lots of documents easy to access)
- money (documents will only need to be printed so quite cheap to use)
P-
- access (personal documents such as diaries may be difficult to gain access to)
- background of researcher (may lose objectivity if the topic is personal to them, may need skills to interpret and understand the documents)
E+
- informed consent (no need to gain consent especially with public documents as consent has already been granted)
- protection of participants (researchers can ensure confidentiality as they can change names of individuals)
E-
- confidentiality (people do not always know their documents are being used)
- vulnerable groups (documents containing info of vulnerable groups need to have consent)
T+
- validity (may give depth and insight into particular event or time period)
- verstehen (documents can give real understanding about what life is like)
T-
- reliability (if they are personal, can be hard to replicate)
- validity (hard to check authenticity of some documents)
Documents: Sudy 1: Thomas & Znaniecki- Polish letters
- interactionist study of migration and social change which used variety of documents, including 764 letters written by Polish migrants to their families home detailing their experiences of moving to America
- analysed autobiographies, newspaper articles, court and social work records
Documents: Study 2: Hey- School girl letters
- carried out a study about the formation and thoughts concerning schoolgirl friendship
- used notes girls passed to each other in lessons and their diaries
- in order to gain this info, Hey gained trust and friendship from the girls and even swapper her own personal diaries in order for the girls to share their thoughts
Stuart Stein- Internet as a secondary source
Internet has devolved into an invaluable secondary source
Stein argues there is very little vetting of the info on these sites, unlike most written publications there is no need for submissions of proposals to publishers and editors. For this reason, internet sources should be used with caution. He suggests the following criteria need to be considered when using internet:
- Authorship
- Authority of author
- Authority of the material
- Authority of the site or organisation
- Currency
- Objectivity
Content analysis
Method of dealing systematically with the contents of documents. Most often used to analyse the media. Although these documents usually consist of qualitative data, content analysis allows the researcher to develop this into quantitative data
Gill- describes how content analysis works (measure a particular aspect of media message; eg how many female characters are portrayed as being in paid employment. We decide categories, then tally the number of times each one appears)
