sociology : theory and methods - documents
documents
Secondary data, favoured by potitivists
personal documents - specific to one person, not kept in public domain - letters, diaries
historical documents - documents that tell us about the past - useful for sociologists wanting to study social changes overtime
Aries used portaits to show how childhood is socially constructed rather than inevitable
Advantages of personal documents
validity - personal documents written for personal purposes - high level of validity and proved in depth and genuine insight into people's attitudes
practical - cheap and save researchers time
3) allows the researcher to obtain verstehen
Disadvanatages of personal documents
1) access - especially from family members + may need translation
2)written with an audience in mind e.g. letters - may affect what is being recorded + personal bias likely to be involved
3)unrepresentative and unreliable - every person's diary is unique - difficult to draw generalisations, rejected by positivists
Historical documents
secondary souce, can be either qualitative or quantitative e.g. parish records, birth/death registries, sources of media
Advanatages of historical documents
1)valuable insight into the past that is unobtainable from other form of research methods
2)useful to assess outcomes of various social polcies e.g. rasing skl leaving age
3)allow comparisons over time e.g. peter laslett used parish records and found that the nuclear family existed way before industrialisation and more common than other socios suggested
disadvantages of historical documents
1)time consuming - historical documents may require experts to understand lang and may need to be translated
2)government documents - may not be released because of sensitive data that implicates others in wrongdoings
3)un-representative - some documents may be lost/destroyed
4)validity - how would a sociologist know if souce is authentic/credible?