Documents

• Secondary data created by individuals, groups and organisations, that sociologists can find useful  
• Personal documents – letters, diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, notes and photo collections  
• Public documents – reports from governments, charities and businesses 
• Mainly qualitative data that expresses beliefs and meanings held by individuals and society  
• Some do contain statistical data  
• Interpretivists like documents as they discover the meanings that our actions have and using open ended methods provide valid results  
• Most documents allow sociologists  to research deeper and hidden meanings  
• Positivists reject documents as they lack reliability and representativeness  

Personal documents  

ADVANTAGES  

• Mostly written for personal purposes – have a high degree of validity and provide insight into people attitudes  
• Most are cheap and save time although accessing them is not always easy

DISADVANTAGES  

• Some are created after the…