Data from Document, Texts & Audio/Video

Data from Document, Texts & Audio/Video Qualitative Research Methods

Data From Documents • Defining Document: umbrella term referring to a wide range of written, visual, digital and physical material relevant to the study at hand

Data From Documents • Defining Artifacts: “things” or objects in the environment that represent some form of communication

Data From Documents • What are documents? Official records Letters Newspapers accounts Poems Gov’t accounts Songs Corporate records Diaries Historical accounts Photos Autobiographies Films Etc.

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Public Records: • The official ongoing record of a society’s activities • Presume that if an event happened, some record of it exists somewhere

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Public Records: Includes: records of births, deaths, marriages Police records Program docs Court transcripts Mass media Agency records Public notices Association manuals Etc.

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Public Records: • Paper trails can provide valuable information and be a stimulus for additional paths of inquiry - Routine records - Memos - Correspondences - Charts - Financial records - Bulletin boards - Org. rules/regulations

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Public Records: • Includes previous studies and data banks - relying on other’s work/interpretations of the data i.e., Human Relations Area Files http://www.yale.edu/hraf/index.html

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Personal Documents: • Any first-person narrative that describes an individual’s actions, experiences and beliefs Letters Diaries Scrapbooks Growth Charts Calendars Travel logs Etc.

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Personal Documents: • Reliable source of data concerning a person’s attitudes, beliefs and view of the world - highly subjective - only reflect the participant’s perspective

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Personal Documents: • Things to consider: 1. Is the material trustworthy? 2. Is the material atypical? 3. Has the material been edited/refined? 4. Does the material only contain highlights of life that are considered interesting? 5. Keep in mind that only certain types of people keep autobiographies and/or diaries.

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Personal Documents: • Studies using only personal documents: Abramson (1992) case study of Russian Jewish emigration Thomas & Znaniecki (1927) Polish immigrant life

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Popular Culture Documents: • Materials designed to entertain, inform, and persuade the public • Can be categorized as public record

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Popular Culture Documents: • Includes popular media forms: Television Film Radio Newspaper Literary works Photography Cartoons Internet Etc.

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Popular Culture Documents: • Materials designed to entertain, inform, and persuade the public • Can be categorized as public record

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Popular Culture Documents: • Includes popular media forms: Television Film Radio Newspaper Literary works Photography Cartoons Internet Etc.

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Popular Culture Documents: • Materials designed to entertain, inform, and persuade the public • Can be categorized as public record TV Radio Magazines Film Internet Newspapers Photos Cartoons Etc.

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Popular Culture Documents: • Mass communication materials are good for tracking certain cultural changes and trends i.e., ageism in cartoons, U.S. presidential debates, teenage culture in movies • Focus on one event/program

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Visual Documents: • Growing interest on the use of and analyzing of visual data • Can be classified as the other types of documents mentioned

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Visual Documents: • Film and photography has been used in anthropological studies since the early 1900s 1. Gained wide use in the 1990s 2. Captures events/activities as they happen 3. Only limited by what you can imagine and what the camera can capture

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Visual Documents: • Film and photography 4. Can be costly and intrusive 5. Can use what already exists or create new

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Physical Material/Artifacts: • Physical objects found within the study setting i.e., The UA garbage study Physical Trace: changes in the physical setting brought about by activities of people in that setting i.e., Children’s interest in Christmas and Racial attitudes on campus, libraries and reading habits

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Physical Material/Artifacts: Advantages: 1. Record the results of actual behavior 2. Usually nonreactive and unobtrusive - applied after behavior has occurred 3. Ubiquitous and readily available 4. Usually applied to inanimate objects

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Physical Material/Artifacts: Advantages: 5. Interrelated behaviors can be studied at once 6. Can be used over long periods - minimal inconvenience and expense

Data From Documents • Types of Documents The Internet: 1. Provides numerous references - widens the scope of data available 2. Supports interaction between groups of people via various CMC 3. Not everyone has access to a computer

Data From Documents • Types of Documents The Internet: • The quantity of information is no guarantee for comprehensiveness/substance 5. Each form of CMC has its own impact on the information it transmits/is received 6. Writing skills and computer literacy impact group interaction

Data From Documents • Types of Documents The Internet: • Discrepancies between real and online personalities • Here today, gone tomorrow ****Results are strongly influenced by the characteristics of the data revealed, concealed, or altered because the CMC

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Researcher-Generated Documents: • Documents prepared by the researcher or for the researcher by participants after the study has begun • Provides insight into the situation, person, or event being studied

Data From Documents • Types of Documents Researcher-Generated Documents: • Includes: Diaries Logs Life histories Photos Quantitative data Etc.

Data From Documents • Using Document in Qual Research • Not much different than using any other kind of data - Data collection is guided by questions, educated hunches, and emerging findings

Data From Documents • Using Document in Qual Research • Researcher must keep an open mind - Possibilities are limitless • The authenticity of documents must be verified before use - Also the condition in which it was produced should be discovered

Data From Documents • Using Document in Qual Research Questions to consider: • What is the history of the document? • How was it acquired by the researcher? • Is there any guarantee with the document? • Has it been tampered with or altered? • Under what circumstances and for what purposes was it produced?

Data From Documents • Using Document in Qual Research Questions to consider: • Who’s the author? What were they trying to accomplish with the document? • What were the author’s sources of information? - eyewitness acct - reconstruction -secondhand acct - interpretation

Data From Documents • Using Document in Qual Research Questions to consider: • What was/is the author’s bias? • To what extent was the writer likely to want to tell the truth? • Do other documents exist that might shed additional light on the subject? If so, who has them/where are they? • Primary or secondary source?

Data From Documents • Using Document in Qual Research • A coding and or cataloging system must be developed by the researcher - copy written documents if possible - photograph or videotape artifacts - qualitative content analysis

Data From Documents • Strengths and Limitations Limitations: 1.Documents are not typically developed for research - may be incomplete - may not be in a form that makes sense to the researcher 2. Authenticity must be confirmed

Data From Documents • Strengths and Limitations Strengths: • May be the best source of data on a particular topic • Can be used in the same manner as interviews or observations - descriptions - verify emerging hypothesis - advance new hypothesis/categories - offer historical understanding - track changes

Data From Documents • Strengths and Limitations Strengths: 3. Stable 4. More objective than other types of data 5. Unobtrusive

Data From Documents Using video for research blog: • http://www.methodspace.com/profiles/blogs/using-video-for-research

Data from Document, Texts & Audio/Video