RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH 201
Documentary research
There are copious documentary sources of data in
research and, although these are helpful for the
researcher, a range of considerations has to be
brought to bear on their use. For example, some
social worlds, cultures and events are ‘literate’,
i.e. documents are plentiful and are part of the
everyday world of the participants, while other
cultures may be less so. This affects the status of
the documents. Further, while some documents
may have been written deliberately for research,
most have not; some are written by researchers
for researchers but, again, most are not. Indeed
most have been written for a purpose, agenda,
an audience other than researchers, and this
raises questions about their reliability and validity.
Documents are useful in rendering more visible
the phenomena under study (Prior 2003: 87).
However, they have to be taken in conjunction
with a whole range of other factors occurring at the
same time. Prior (2003: 173) cites the analogy of
the inert opera libretto, which cannot be read
on its own, but has to be understood in the
context of the whole action, drama, music and
performance of the opera; it is only one part of the
jigsaw (see http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/
9780415368780 – Chapter 8, file 8.1. ppt).
Documents take a multitude of forms, including,
for example:
field notes
diaries and journals
records
biographies
autobiographies
formal records
timesheets/timetables
technical documents
minutes of meetings
samples of students’ work
memos and emails
reports and statistics
correspondence
plans
pamphlets and advertisements
prospectuses and directories
archives
stories
annals and chronicles
photographs and artefacts
conversations and speeches
policy documents
primary and secondary sources
newspaper articles
books and articles
public records.
This is only an initial list and, indeed, one can see
that no written source is ruled out in documentary
analysis.
Documentary analysis has several attractions
(Bailey 1994: 294–6). It can enable the researcher
to reach inaccessible persons or subjects, as in
the case in historical research. Further, like
non-participant or indirect observation, there is
little or no reactivity on the part of the writer,
particularly if the document was not written with
the intention of being research data. Documentary
study is also useful in longitudinal analysis, as
it may show how situations have evolved over
time. Some documents enable large samples to be
addressed (e.g. registers of births, marriages and
deaths, census returns, obituaries in newspapers
and suchlike). Documents, many written ‘live’ and
in situ,maycatchthedynamicsituationatthetime
of writing. Some documents, particularly if they are
very personal (e.g. letters and diaries) may catch
personal details and feeling (‘confessions’: Bailey
1994: 296) that would not otherwise surface. If
documents are held in a central location, e.g. a
library, collection or archive, savings of cost and
time may be made. Finally, many documents in the
public domain may have been written by skilled
professionals and may contain more valuable
information and insights than those written by
relatively uninformed amateurs.
On the other hand, documents bring difficulties
(Bailey 1994: 296–8). They may be highly biased
and selective, as they were not intended to
be regarded as research data but were written
for a different purpose, audience and context.
They, themselves, may be interpretations of events
rather than objective accounts. Indeed, attrition
and ‘selective survival’, together with selective
Chapter 8