Sociology (AS) Research Methods- Documents

Why do positivists reject documents?

-don't meet their main goals of representativeness, reliability and generalisability. -often from unreliable and unstandardised authors and everyone's diary is unique so it's hard to make generalisations. -often unrepresentative, as illiterate people and people with little leisure time can't write diaries/letters. -however, positivists sometimes use content analysis on documents to produce quantitative data from them.

Disadvantages of documents

-need to be checked using the criteria Scott (1990) stated.

Advantage of documents

-personal documents give rich detail, qualitative data that allow the researcher to get close to the social actor's reality. This is why interpretivists favour them. -sometimes, historical documents are the only way to study history. -documents offer an extra check of results obtained by primary methods. -cheap source of data, someone else has already gathered it.

Historical governments

Personal/public document created in the past. Study of families and households illustrates some historical documents that have been used: -Laslett used Parish records in his study of pre-industrial England. -Anderson used parliamentary reports on child labour to study changes in family structure, in 19th century Preston. -Ariès used child rearing manuals and paintings of children in his study on the rise of the notion of childhood.

Personal documents

Letters, diaries, photo albums, and autobiographies. First person accounts of social events and experiences, so they're qualitative. E.g. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America is a study of migration and social change.

Why do interpretivists favour documents?

-achieve their main goal of validity. -valid, as they're usually written with the researcher in mind. -tend to provide, rich detail qualitative data.

Documents

Any written text such as diaries, government reports, medical records, novels and newspapers. They also include paintings, maps and photographs.

How does Scott (1990) argue you should assess documents?

Four criteria for evaluating documents: 1- authenticity: is the document what it claims to be? Are there missing pages? If it's a copy, is it free from error? (E.g. Hitler diaries were proven to be fake). 2- credibility: is the document believable? (E.g. Many politicians write diaries intended for publication to inflate their own importance). Is the document accurate? (E.g. Was it written at the time or years later? Stein (2003) states internet documents aren't usually checked for publication). 3- representativeness: is the evidence in the document typical? If not, it may not be safe to generalise from. Not all documents survive and some aren't always available for researchers to access. For example, there's a 30 year rule for some official documents and diaries may not be available until the author is dead. Certain groups may also be unrepresented: illiterate and those with little leisure time are unlikely to keep diaries. 4- meaning: researcher may need special skills to understand a document. E.g. It may need to be translated and words can change their meaning over time. Researchers may interpret documents differently.

Public documents

Produced by organisations such as government departments, schools and charities. E.g. Ofsted reports and published company accounts. The Black report (1980) showed inequalities in health and was a major interest for sociologists.