What is the advantage and disadvantage of document analysis?

Answer 1

An advantage is that documents are unobtrusive and can be used without imposing on participants; they can be checked and re-checked for reliability.

The main advantages of document analysis are:

• it overcomes the difficulties of encouraging participation by users
• there are few costs involved other than staff time.

Investigation cause does not falsify the data

Answer 2

Disadvantages of Content Analysis

Content analysis suffers from several disadvantages, both theoretical and procedural. In particular, content analysis:

• can be extremely time consuming
• is subject to increased error, particularly when relational analysis is used to attain a higher level of interpretation
• is often devoid of theoretical base, or attempts too liberally to draw meaningful inferences about the relationships and impacts implied in a study
• is inherently reductive, particularly when dealing with complex texts
• tends too often to simply consist of word counts
• often disregards the context that produced the text, as well as the state of things after the text is produced
• can be difficult to automate or computerize

Advantages of Content Analysis

Content analysis offers several advantages to researchers who consider using it. In particular, content analysis:

• looks directly at communication via texts or transcripts, and hence gets at the central aspect of social interaction
• can allow for both quantitative and qualitative operations
• can provides valuable historical/cultural insights over time through analysis of texts
• allows a closeness to text which can alternate between specific categories and relationships and also statistically analyzes the coded form of the text
• can be used to interpret texts for purposes such as the development of expert systems (since knowledge and rules can both be coded in terms of explicit statements about the relationships among concepts)
• is an unobtrusive means of analyzing interactions
• provides insight into complex models of human thought and language use

Answer 3

Document review can provide the researcher with vital information about certain topics. However some documents are not objective and can therefore provide the researcher with skewed facts.