Looking at some old copies of SOCIAL STUDIES REVIEW (the predecessor of SOCIOLOGY REVIEW) recently, I came across an article by John Scott on ‘Documents in social research’ (1990). It seems to me that, in general, exam questions on secondary data, especially those on documentary sources, tend to be unpopular with students and are not as well answered as questions on other methods, such as participant observation or interviews. Even questions on official statistics might bring a sigh of relief to many students, but not ‘documents’. Why is this?
Documentary evidence can be rich in insights and detail that help us to understand the minutiae of everyday life for people both in the past and in society today. So what is a document? Scott defined it is as:
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