DOCUMENTS - Personal, Public, Historical

DOCUMENTS - Personal, Public, Historical

1. Personal, public and historical documents are all types of QUALITATIVE data.

2. These can be any type of written text: diaries, government reports, medical reports, letters, novels, newspapers, shopping lists, bank statements and more...and we can even include 'texts' that aren't written, such as paintings, photos, maps, films, tv, sound recordings, other media, etc. As long as it's qualitative.

   • Public documents are produced by public agencies, such as the government, businesses or charities, etc. which are available (at least in part) to researchers.
     • Examples are Ofsted reports, and the Black Report into inequalities in health.
   • Personal documents are created by individuals and can include diaries, letters, autobiographies etc.
     • • Anne Frank's Diary.
     • Thomas and Znanieki used 700+ personal documents (as well as public documents) to explore the experiences of Polish immigrants in America.
   • Historical documents can be either public or personal, but they come from the past.
     • Aries used child-rearing manuals and paintings from the past to explore the notion of childhood through time.

3. Authenticity

   • Is the document legitimate? Sometimes a document may have missing information, contain errors, or be a copy. E.g. The Hitler Diaries were later proven to be fakes. This will lower the legitimacy of the research findings.

4. Credibility

   • Can what the document says be believed? The author may have had an agenda, vested interest, bias etc. in saying a certain thing - e.g., politicians may lie in documents to make themselves look good.

5. Representativeness

   • It's hard to tell if a document is totally representative.
     • Not all documents are available or survive, so it's hard for sociologists to know for sure - it may also be difficult to get all the information that they would need to make their research representative.
   • Not all groups could be represented: the illiterate or those with no time to record things are not likely to leave texts behind. The same problem can be found when looking at surveys.
     • Postal Questionnaires and their use in Sociological Research

6. Meaning

   • It may take special training to understand a document: if it's in another language, or if it's very old, or a certain media.
     • The need for trained individuals can add to the cost, which would otherwise be quite low.

7. The Positivist View

   • Positivists don't usually favour the use of personal/public/historical documents because they fail to be RELIABLE, GENERALISABLE and REPRESENTATIVE.
     • Unstandardised and unreliable: each document may be unique.
     • Researchers may impose their own beliefs upon the interpretation of qualitative data.

8. The Interpretivist View

   • Interpretivists tend to favour the use of these types of documents, especially PERSONAL DOCUMENTS: the information can be very valid, and an authentic, unbiased personal account
     • The researcher can gain an insight into a social actor's personal reality, and this is a fundamental aim of the interpretivist approach.
   • Detailed, qualitative data.

9. Content analysis, a systematic means of describing and classifying content, is a main method used.

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