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Lecture 7 PSR - Documentary approaches
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- 1Document = a PRE-EXISTING type of visual or audio-visual source – these are texts that can be READWhy do documentary research?
Two general reasons:
1. Introductory context to a research project
2. To avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’
Three specific reasons:
1. Adversarial or sensitive areas, where direct data-gathering is difficult
2. Practical concerns, where direct data-gathering is impossible or unethical
3. Documentary presentation of issues worthy of research. Eg. research into health communication and promotion can encompass analysis of the content of visual and print media and of artefacts - 2“few single events in the history of public health have had as dramatic an effect on tobacco control as the public release of the tobacco industry’s previously secret internal documents.”Locating material:
• National & Local Archives & Libraries
• Specialist Libraries and collections
• Institutions: firms, universities, hospitals
• Families, individuals - 3As time goes on, documentary sources are increasingly ‘born digital’ – that is they were not created on paper but electronically using a computer.However, we cannot rely too heavily on digital sources and ways of acquiring primary and secondary sources – huge array of material that is not digital
- 4Documents not a neutral or comprehensive source: 1. Documents produced in specific context. Need to know what these are, as this will shape their content and how we might use them. 2. Documents reflect power relations & inequalities. Documents tend to be produced by bureaucracies and these are hierarchical.Documents produced by foreign aid workers may not reflect the views of local people. 3. Documents don’t capture everything. Documents better at capturing what people say, not necessarily what they do.Archives & source availability:
1. Archival selection processes. No archive or other collection of documents, no matter how comprehensive, keeps every piece of paper about everything. Researchers cannot be certain that all of the material on any particular topic is available and accessible.
2. Unplanned/planned destruction. E.g., during the Iraq War. In 2003, the national library was attacked by arsonists and looters. About 25% of its books and 60% of its manuscripts were destroyed, including rare material on the Ottoman Empire and ancient Islam.
3. Access & censorship. Where records do exist, may be restrictions on access. Government records can be closed for a period of time, in order to protect ministerial discussions. Other papers may be closed for a period of time to protect confidentiality – eg. medical records - 5The researcher: 1. ‘Conduit’ vs. ‘Conductor’ When the researcher was positioned as a passive conduit, documents were used as straightforward nuggets of general truth (B-papers with one quote purporting to prove an expansive contention; A-papers with no source, searching, analysis, or researcher information, telling a story without qualification). When the researcher was positioned as an active constructor, documents were treated as problematic, complex sources of specific information that needed a context to be understood, and readers were made aware of the way in which the researcher had constructed their account of the past (B-papers giving precise, qualified examples located in place, person and time; A-papers with complex purposes, multiple sources, details of searching and analysis, and the limitations inherent in the documents) 2. Racial, ethnic & other bias, conscious or unconscious. As researchers we are never entirely free from bias, without values or neutral. 3. Impact on selection and interpretation of documents.How do we achieve a balanced document analysis?
Preliminary approach: Secondary reading. Establish historical, social and political background to contextualise.
Starting primary research. ‘Structured skim’ for preliminary selection - 6What are some of the key things you should look for when reading a source critically? -Situate the source within context of production -This critical reading should direct you back to thinking about the author, their biases, the positions or assumptions that he or she might be making. -You should also consider what the source does not say, as much as what it does. -It can be useful to make a distinction between what we call the witting and unwitting evidence that the source contains. What we understand by this is what the author of the source means to convey and the unintended evidence that it might provide -Corroboration / triangulation. Cross-checking conclusions with different types of sources or methodsApproaches to analysis:
• Content analysis: quantitative, positivist. Or, you could take a more quantitative or positivist approach to content analysis looking for data. You might, for instance count the occurences of a particular word and its co-occuring terms - text mining tools can be helpful here.
• Textual analysis: thematic labelling or development of grounded theory (N-Vivo). You might focus on textual analysis, searching for key themes to develop a grounded theory. You might use a tool like N-Vivo to help you here. Textual analysis involves analysing not just the content, but also the structure or design of a text and how elements function, often as part of a larger (historical, cultural) context. For example, discourse and semiotic analysis.
• - 7Discourse analysis: attention to constitutive, not descriptive, power of language. You might want to go deeper into the nature of the language used in the source, and analyse the discourse produced by the source. Social constructivists would argue that the language used within a source does not describe what’s going on, but produces it. Language shapes the social world and our understanding of it. This can be particularly helpful when thinking about the interplay between knowledge & power. • Semiotics: investigating relationships between the signifier and the signified. You could go even further down the lingusitic route, and take a semiotic approach. This is the study of how words or images convey meaning. Assumes a distinction between the surface meaning of the word, object or image and the deeper level of meaning attached to it. Eg. A bunch of red roses is not just a bunch of red flowers, but in many cultures is associated with romantic love.Conclusions:
• Primary documentary studies are a valuable method in some areas of health research e.g., was invaluable in adversarial areas like tobacco company research.
• Eclectic range of sources, though nature of archiving and survival can raise issues of reliability and representativeness.
• Documentary sources are complex and fragmentary, requiring contextualisation, active interpretation and triangulation with other sources.
• Provisional nature of interpretation. I think it’s also important to remember that whatever conclusion we arrive at, it will always be provisional. You are an active constructor of your research: you cannot arrive at a single ‘truth’. We should strive towards what historian Richard Evans called a ‘detached mode of cognition’ – adopting an open approach to our sources, at the same time as being aware of our own position and biases.
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