Document Analysis

Definition

The detailed examination of documents produced across a wide range of social practices, taking a variety of forms from the written word to the visual image. The significance of the documents may be located in the historical circumstances of production, in their circulation and reception of the item and also the social functions, interpretations, effects and uses that may be associated with them.

Distinctive Features

A wide range of documents is available to the social researcher. Personal items such as diaries, letters, aide-mémoires, shopping lists and photographs produced as part of everyday existence may form a private documentaryrecord, evidence of the way lives are lived and how the social world is engaged with by individuals and social groups at different times and in different places. Life is usually recorded by a birth certificate, accompanied by a passport or identity card and may be concluded by a death certificate. Although involving intensely personal meanings, these documents are produced by or on behalf of the state and like so much documentary material the information carried there is part of public documentation.

Places of work, commercial and public organizations and educational institutions are amongst the many economic, social and cultural organizations that produce documents that are of interest to research. These may range, for example, from contracts of employment to till receipts and records of educational achievement and offer information about people's lives, work and leisure and the social and economic relations they enter into.

The continuing development of technology and the recent expansion of telecommunications and the mass media have added to the amount and number of forms that documents take, from the hand production of written and visual documentation to the mechanical production of printed material and reproduction of mass media documents. Although document analysis is usually of the written word other forms of communication must be accounted for (Prior, 2003: 5). Radio, cinema and television generate a prolific twenty-first century display of visual, textual, oral and sonic document forms. As with all documents, these have a variety of social functions, including information, leisure and social control functions. A television [Page 80]advertisement, for example, is a ubiquitous example of a mass media document, loaded with commercial and social information, styles, ideas, attitudes, values, persuasions and ideologies and circulated widely, through multiple broadcasts and receptions. Internet websites represent commercial, governmental, educational and other organizational interests and exist alongside personal websites and individually managed ‘blogs’, the frequently updated web journals, that make up the pages of virtual documentation. So there is a wide range of documents out there waiting to be analysed, and the social researcher will pose questions about document availability and reasons for retention but will also recognize that not all social facts have been documented and that not all documents are available to research.

Evaluation

A series of essential criteria is applied to the analysis of documents. Questions about the document's authenticity, credibility, representativeness and meaning are the usual starting points (Scott, 1990). Establishing the authentic nature of a document, that it was produced by the author or authorizing body ascribed to it, leads into wider issues of the nature and circumstances of the document's production. An exploration of the encoding process, the procedure of selection and putting into place the words, images or other elements that make up the content of the document is important not least in a consideration of any meaning the document may come to have (Hall, 2001). The credibility of the document as evidence hinges on the truth and accuracy of its reference and how widely it represents the phenomena the researcher is investigating. For example, questions of authenticity regarding an inscription on a public building or monument commemorating a historical event may be few but questions of why, how and whose interest the document serves may be many.

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