RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok
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RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

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DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH 203 What are you, the reader/researcher bringing to the document in trying to make sense of it What alternative interpretations of the document are possible and tenable How is the chosen interpretation justified What are the problems of reliability and validity in your reading of the document What is the place of the document in the overall research project Questions are being raised here about the reliability and validity of the documents (see http:// www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415368780 – Chapter 8, file 8.3. ppt). They are social products, located in specific contexts, and, as such, have to be interrogated and interpreted rather than simply accepted. They are often selective, deliberately excluding certain details or information and serving purposes and audiences other than the researcher. Documents lie on several continua, for example: Formal/official ↔ Informal/lay Published ↔ Unpublished Public domain ↔ Private papers Anonymous ↔ Authored Facts ↔ Beliefs Professional ↔ Lay For circulation ↔ Not for circulation Placing documents along these several continua can assist the researcher in answering the preceding long list of questions. Reliability and validity in documentary analysis Validity may be strong in first person documents or in documents that were written for a specific purpose (Bailey 1994: 317). However, that purpose may not coincide with that of research, thereby undermining its validity for research purposes. We mentioned earlier the problem of bias, selectivity, being written for an audience and purposes different from those of the researcher, attrition and selective survival; all these undermine validity. In historical research great care is paid to authenticity and provenance, and documents may be subject to chemical analysis here (e.g. of inks, paper, parchment and so on) in order to detect forgeries. Bailey (1994: 318) suggests that face validity and construct validity in documents may be stronger and more sufficient than other forms of validity, though corroboration with other documents should be undertaken wherever possible. With regard to reliability, while subjectivity may feature highly in certain documents, reliability by corroboration may also be pursued. The standards and criteria of reliability have to be declared by the researcher. Scott (1990) suggests four criteria for validity and reliability in using documents: authenticity; credibility (including accuracy, legitimacy and sincerity); representativeness (including availability and which documents have survived the passage of time); and meaning (actual and interpreted). It is often difficult to disentangle fact from interpretation in a document and the research that is conducted using it (see http://www. routledge.com/textbooks/9780415368780 – Chapter 8, file 8.4. ppt). Understanding documents is a hermeneutic exercise, at several stages. Giddens (1979) remarked that researchers have to live with a ‘double hermeneutic’, that is, they interpret a world that is already interpreted by the participants, a pre-interpreted world. Actors or participants interpret or ascribe meaning to the world and then the researcher interprets or ascribes meaning to these interpretations. However, for the user of documents, the matter extends further. Documents record live events, so written data on social events become second hand because they translate the researcher’s/writer’s interpretation/inference of the world into another medium – from action to writing: a triple hermeneutic. Documents are part of the world and the action on which they are commenting. Then the reader places his or her interpretation/inference on the document, a quadruple hermeneutic. At each of these four stages interpretation, inference and bias and, thereby, unreliability could enter the scene. As Connelly and Clandinin (1997: 84) remark, converting field text into a research text is a process of (increasing) interpretation. Field texts and documents, they Chapter 8

204 HISTORICAL AND DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH suggest, are close to the actual experience under study, whereas research texts are at a remove; that distance lets in unreliability and invalidity. While acknowledgement of this by the researcher, and the researcher’s identification of the criteria for judging the research, may go some way towards addressing this issue (i.e. reflexivity), nevertheless it may not solve the problem, only articulate it. The issue is that the researcher has to exercise extreme caution in using documents. As well as having a life of their own, documents are interpretations of events. As Prior (2003: 26) suggests, the content of documents may not be the most important feature of the document, and documents are ‘situated products’. They are the drivers, media (channels), mediators (filters) and outcomes of social interaction (a clear exemplification of Giddens’ theory of structuration). Understanding their context is crucial to understanding the document. Documents are multilevelled and have to be interpreted at their many levels; they need to be contextualized. For a detailed analysis of several aspects of documents in research we refer readers to Prior (2003). For examples of documents, we refer the reader to the accompanying web site pages (http:// www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415368780 – Chapter 8, file 8.1.doc; http://www.routledge. com/textbooks/9780415368780 – Chapter 8, file 8.2.doc).

204 HISTORICAL AND DOCUMENTARY <strong>RESEARCH</strong><br />

suggest, are close to the actual experience under<br />

study, whereas research texts are at a remove;<br />

that distance lets in unreliability and invalidity.<br />

While acknowledgement of this by the researcher,<br />

and the researcher’s identification of the criteria<br />

for judging the research, may go some way<br />

towards addressing this issue (i.e. reflexivity), nevertheless<br />

it may not solve the problem, only<br />

articulate it.<br />

The issue is that the researcher has to exercise<br />

extreme caution in using documents. As well<br />

as having a life of their own, documents are<br />

interpretations of events. As Prior (2003: 26)<br />

suggests, the content of documents may not be<br />

the most important feature of the document,<br />

and documents are ‘situated products’. They<br />

are the drivers, media (channels), mediators<br />

(filters) and outcomes of social interaction<br />

(a clear exemplification of Giddens’ theory<br />

of structuration). Understanding their context<br />

is crucial to understanding the document.<br />

Documents are multilevelled and have to be<br />

interpreted at their many levels; they need to<br />

be contextualized.<br />

For a detailed analysis of several aspects of<br />

documents in research we refer readers to Prior<br />

(2003). For examples of documents, we refer the<br />

reader to the accompanying web site pages (http://<br />

www.routledge.com/textbo<strong>ok</strong>s/9780415368780 –<br />

Chapter 8, file 8.1.doc; http://www.routledge.<br />

com/textbo<strong>ok</strong>s/9780415368780 – Chapter 8, file<br />

8.2.doc).

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