Preface

This book was originally intended to apply rather specifically to the fields of theology, education and the humanities. However, its relevance is much broader, especially as research in every field usually requires an analysis of existing research literature.

Documentary analysis generaly follows the research cycle, starting with a research question and ending with a comparison of findings to current understandings of the topic. Some aspects are a little more specific to documentary analysis:

• Define the body of literature (much like defining a population of human subjects)
• Authenticate those documents
• Choose a specific method, for example:
• Narratology
• Discourse analysis
• Coding and thematic analysis
• Hermeneutics
• Legal

The order of chapters follows a particular rationale. We open with the nature of documentary analysis, and progress to chapters that approximate roughly to how to analyse documents. Then follows several chapters on standards and ethics, and we close with a number of case studies in different fields: education, journalism, medicine, law, and anthropology.