Sociology Research Methods-Documents

Types of documents

Public-charities, Ofsted reports, newspaper articles

Personal-diaries and letters

Historical-any docs from the past-(Aries) used paintings in study of childhood

Ways of interpreting documents

Positivists dislike

Often unstandardised-cannot generalise as is unique interpretation

Is unrepresentative-only literate group included

Researchers may insert own meanings

Interpretivists Like

Qualitative data-validity through authentic statements-weren't made for research

Documents-Practical Advantages and Disadvantages

+public=cheap and readily available-wealth of data

+Readily available as is secondary data is

+only source of information about past events

-Subjective

-lack of access as personal docs may be damaged or lost

-Difficulty to interpret-language barriers+changing meanings-may need to hire translator e.g for Znaniecki study

Documents-Ethical Advantages and Disadvantages

+No need for informed consent as data in the public sphere e.g Ofsted reports

+No psychological or physical harm as no people experimented on-secondary

-Person who wrote docs may not be alive to consent-e.g Anne Frank's diary

-May be sensitive data

Documents-Theoretical Advantages and Disadvantages

Interpretivists=+

+Valid as authentic statements and Verstehen-insight

Positivists=-

-May not be representative as docs could be lost or damaged-small scale

-Lacks validity-may not be authentic

-Not reliable-personal interpretations-cannot precisely replicate to make comparisons-subjective interp

Examples of case studies

Personal Docs-Thomas+Znaniecki-did study of experience of polish immigrants in Chicago-insight into motivations

Eval-may be giving a rose-tinted view to put family in Poland at ease

History example-Aries used paintings in study of childhood-looked into childrearing manuals-kids like mini adults in past-now child-centred

4 Key things when assessing documents (Scott)

Authenticity-is it genuine-is it a copy, how much of a document do you have

Credibility-is it sincere and believable or a one-sided version

Representativeness-does it cover the whole cross section of society to generalise-may not have responses from all groups-not all documents survive

Meanings-researchers may need special skills to understand the document-e.g a translator-diff sociologists Interp differently

Content Analysis

Analysing documents produced by the mass media-allows quantitative data to be produced

Category=gender stereotypes-e.g how may times women are used in cleaning ads compared to men

-Researcher decides categories and what is important-quite subjective