Document Analysis

This chapter explores the ways that qualitative researchers have engaged with documents. It explores approaches that focus on the substantive content of documents—the new area of systematically reviewing qualitative research articles and more discursive work that looks at how documents, like newspaper articles, create specific versions of the world. It also explores the situated use and creation of documents—how interview-based and ethnographic studies have looked at the place of documents in the lives of those they study and on more ethnomethodological work, that seeks to describe the practical ways that documents are used and created in specific interactions.