Documents

What are documents?

Forms of secondary data created by individuals, groups or organisations.

What is a personal document?

A document produced by an individual that may reveal their experiences, beliefs or meanings.

What are public documents?

Documents produced for public consumption, such as newspapers, government reports or political publications.

What are historical documents?

Documents from the past that can be used to investigate historical societies and social change.

What is qualitative documentary data?

Documentary information consisting mainly of words, meanings and descriptions rather than numerical data.

Why do interpretivists favour documents?

They can provide detailed insights into people's meanings, beliefs and experiences.

What is a strength of documents?

They can provide access to information about the past that cannot be collected through direct observation.

What is another strength of documents?

They can provide detailed qualitative information about people's experiences and beliefs.

What is a weakness of documents?

The researcher cannot control how or why the document was originally produced.

What is another weakness of documents?

The document may be biased or unrepresentative.

What is authenticity?

Whether a document is genuine and really comes from the claimed source.

What is credibility?

Whether the information in a document can be trusted as accurate.

Why might personal documents lack representativeness?

They are usually created by particular individuals and may not represent wider society.