Document Analysis
The standard approach to the analysis of documents focuses primarily on what is contained within them. In this frame, documents are viewed as conduits of communication between, say, a writer and a reader—conduits that contain meaningful messages. Such messages are usually in the form of writing but can engage other formats such as maps, architectural plans, films, and photographs.
Every document enters into human activity in a dual relation. First, documents enter the social field as receptacles (of instructions, obligations, contracts, wishes, reports, etc.). Second, they enter the field as agents in their own right, and as agents documents have effects long after their human creators are dead and buried (e.g., wills, testaments). In addition, documents as agents are always open to manipulation by others—as allies, as resources for further action, as opponents to be destroyed or suppressed. (We should not forget that people burn, ban, censor, and forge documents as well as read and write them.)
Perhaps the best intellectual starting point for a qualitative researcher is in the work of Michel Foucault (1926–1984).
The production of documents, such as statistical and other reports on crime, health, poverty, and the environment, has figured as an object of study in numerous areas of social science research. The standard research stance is to use such reports as a resource for further study—as, say, a source of data on crime or health.
what is important is a study of the manner in which people use written (and nonwritten) traces to facilitate or manage features of social organization— whether they be transitory episodes of interaction or the ongoing functioning of a hospital, a business, or a school. For example, in the field of medical sociology, there have been numerous studies directed at showing the ways in which patient identities and diagnoses are often shored up through the use of written traces in medical “charts” and patient files.