A Matter of Record: Documentary Sources in Social Research

Cover
Title Page
Contents
List of Figures
Preface
1 Social Research and Documentary Sources
	Evidence and data in social research
	What are documents?
2 Assessing Documentary Sources
	Authenticity: soundness and authorship
	Credibility: sincerity and accuracy
	Representativeness: survival and availability
	Meaning: literal and interpretative understanding
3 The Use of Documents in Social Research
	The search for King Arthur
	Who wrote the Zinoviev letter?
	The social meanings of suicide
	Social research and the relativity of accounts
4 The Official Realm: Public and Private
	The State, surveillance and secrecy
	Official documents in the State
	Official records in the private sphere
5 Administrative Routines and Situated Decisions
	Conceptual instruments and administrative routines
	Situated decisions
6 Explorations in Official Documents
	Occupation, class and inequality
	Class schemas and the problem of meaning
	Measuring the class structure
	The records of health, welfare and education
	Business and industrial records
7 The Public Sphere and Mass Communication
	Public opinion, the media and the audience
	Images, content and meaning
	Directories, almanacs and yearbooks
	The annals of the rich and powerful
8 Personal Documents
	Diaries, letters and autobiographies
	Photographs and visual sources
Notes
Index