Analyzing Documentary Accounts (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences)

All kinds of human behavior are observed, written about, or documented. Ethnographers can be seen as "documentary accountants" -- they observe and provide analysis. This book shows how to use documentary works as data sources and how qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques can be combined. It shows how care must be taken with sampling and coding and gives attention to reliability and validity issues, showing how to begin statistical exploration once the data are assembled.