Documents

Documents are secondary data and are favoured by interpretivists. These are created by individuals, group and organisations. They mainly contain qualitative data that expresses beliefs and meanings held by an individuals or organisation.

Personal documents

Personal documents take the form of diaries, memoirs, autobiographies and letters

Advantages

Valid- Written for personal purposes so will have a high degree of validity and provide an in depth and genuine insight into peoples attitudes

Practical- They are cheap and save researchers time

Illuminates many areas of social life

Can be used to confirm or question other interpretations or accounts

Disadvantages

Some groups are unlikely to produce personal documents such as letters and diaries and so their views aren’t represented while those with time and literacy skills may be over represented

Personal documents such as letters are written with an audience in mind and may affect what is being recorded.

Personal bias is likely to be present

Historical bias

Historical documents provide evidence from the past

Advantages

They allow comparisons over time (birth, death and marriage rates)

Useful for assessing outcomes of various social policy’s

Disadvantages

Un-representative- Some documents may get lost or destroyed

The validity of the documents are open to the question as the they may have been written selectively

The authenticity of a document is open to question as it might not have been written by the person is attributed to, therefore lowering its reliability