Advantages And Limitations Of Documentary Research

Documentary research is the use of outside sources, documents, to support the viewpoint or argument of an academic work. The process of documentary researchoften involves some or all of conceptualising, using and assessing documents.This article examines the function of documents as a data source in qualitative research and discusses document analysis procedure in the context of actual research experiences. Targeted to research novices, the article takes a nuts‐and‐bolts approach to document analysis. It describes the nature and forms of documents, outlines the advantages and limitations of document analysis, and offers specific examples of the use of documents in the research process. The application of document analysis to a grounded theory

Have a backup plan.

A researcher can use a huge ple (o’Leary, 2014).

One of the advantages in using documentary research is the researcher is able to gain permission to access information that would not normally be available due to not being found or subjects refusing to be interviewed.In addrion, using document analysis takes out the personal aspect of the effect a researcher might have on an individual during an interview.

Some documents reveal feelings, known as spontaneous data, and may point to recorded actions in a detailed setting. In addition confessionaldocuments may give insight to how people see things and give a reality account. One of the salient features of this method is it is relatively low in cost. Of course documents can vary in quality, but some are very detailed and give useful information that one cannot always give in a questionnaire or interview. However, it must be remembered that document records may be inclomplete, misfiled or in someone’s out basket. Therefore, documents may have gaps in their information

Maddocks paper focues on the extent that energy literacy ideas are included in the Geography curriculum in Australian. He used the document analysis method to analyze the

The method of document analysis was appropriate to use because the resesarchers needed to find physical evidence regarding energy literacy that helped them code their content into themes (O’Leary, 2014).The researchers utilized the document analysis method to concentrate on the Australian Curriculum desriptions and their content using as Bowen (2009) calls the "first-pass document review – in which meaningful and relevant passages of text or other data are identified” (p. 32). Information was identified using predetermined themes composed of Pertinent information identified through this initial process. The researchers used predetermined themes to justify the information used from document sources, that fit the developed predetermined themes,that were composed of distinctive energy literacy theories, suggested by Heinberg (2012). The end result of the study concluded “ many opportunities exist to address energy concepts and issues from a geographical perspective, but the degree to which energy literacy is deliberately taught in the post-primary classroom depends significantly on the teacher” suggestin further exploration on training teachers to incorporate energy literacy when teaching