Last Updated on October 12, 2026 by Karl Thompson
This is a theory and methods question of the kind that comes up at the end of Paper 1 and in the theory and methods section of Paper 3 of the AQA’s A-level sociology exams.
Source note: this is a practice question I wrote in the style of the AQA’s “outline and explain” questions. As far as I know, it hasn’t appeared in this exact form on an AQA paper. The nearest real question is on AS Paper 2 (7191/2), June 2022: “Evaluate the disadvantages of using personal documents in sociological research” (16 marks).
You might like to have a go at answering this yourself before reading on. If you need to revise the topic first, see my posts on secondary qualitative data and personal documents.
The Question (no item!)
Outline and explain two practical problems of using documents in social research. (10 marks)
How this question is marked
This is a no-item 10-mark question, so the two problems come from your own knowledge.
There are no marks for evaluation on the no-item 10-markers. Don’t spend time saying why a problem might not matter. Spend it explaining why it is a problem.
The marks go to two things: knowledge of two relevant problems, and analysis, meaning a developed explanation of why each one is a problem for the researcher. Answers in the top band typically have two distinct practical problems, each explained in a developed chain of reasoning, with relevant concepts and examples. Answers that list several problems with no development, or two problems that are really the same one, stay in the lower bands.
The word practical matters. Practical problems are about time, cost, access and the researcher’s personal characteristics, not about validity or representativeness, which are theoretical problems. You can mention the theoretical consequences of a practical problem, but the problem itself has to be practical.
This marking summary is mine, not the AQA’s. It is based on the AQA’s published mark schemes for 10-mark “outline and explain” questions, which use the same structure.
A possible answer
The first practical problem is the sheer volume of documents available, which makes analysing them very time-consuming.
Taking the news as an example, thousands of news items are published every day, and the researcher has to sort out “real” news from “fake news” before they can even start. In a postmodern, media-saturated age, fewer people rely on a handful of mainstream news sources, so the researcher would need to analyse a much wider range of media to get representative material. That adds further to the time the research takes.
Because of this volume, researchers often turn to computer-assisted qualitative analysis, which allows them to search and code large amounts of text quickly. HOWEVER, this effectively quantifies qualitative data, so some of the depth and insight that documents can offer may be lost. The practical problem of time therefore pushes the researcher towards a less in-depth method.
The second practical problem is gaining access, especially to personal documents such as diaries.
Personal diaries can be a very valid source of data, because they are written without any intention of being read by others, so the writer has no reason to present themselves in a false light. HOWEVER, this is exactly what makes access a problem. People who keep diaries may refuse to let a researcher see them, especially if the diaries express negative feelings about people close to them, since sharing these could cause harm to their relationships.
Blogs are much easier to access, since they are public. But because they are written to be read, bloggers tend to edit out much of what they really feel. So the documents a researcher can easily get hold of are the ones that are least likely to reveal people’s private thoughts.
KT’s Commentary
This answer would score in the top band. Both problems are genuinely practical (time and access), they are clearly distinct, and each is developed in a chain of reasoning rather than simply stated.
The strongest part is the second point. It doesn’t just say “access is difficult”. It explains why, links it to the type of document, and makes the analytical point that the documents easiest to access are the least revealing. That is the kind of development that moves an answer from the middle band to the top.
The first point is good but slightly riskier. The final paragraph drifts from a practical problem (time) towards a theoretical one (loss of depth). That’s fine as long as the student keeps the focus on time as the problem, which this answer does by bringing it back in the last sentence. A student who wrote a whole paragraph on validity here would be answering a different question.
If I were teaching this, the other practical problems I’d accept are cost (some archives charge for access or require travel), and the specialist skills needed to read older documents, such as handwriting or archaic language.
Alternative wording: two disadvantages of using personal documents
You might also see a version of this question that asks for two disadvantages of using personal documents. That isn’t limited to practical problems, so theoretical and ethical points count too. Two strong ones would be:
- Credibility. Personal documents may not be sincere. Diaries are sometimes written with an eye on later publication, and letters are written to create an impression on the person receiving them. So the researcher can’t assume a document is an honest record of what its author thought.
- Representativeness. The people who keep diaries and write long letters are not typical of the population, and many personal documents don’t survive. So findings from personal documents are hard to generalise.
Access (see above) would also work for this wording. For more on all of these, see personal documents in social research.
Signposting
This post has been written for students revising for the AQA’s A-level sociology exams.
For more advice on the exams, see my exams, essays and short answer questions page. For a similar question on official statistics, see two reasons why some sociologists choose to use official statistics in their research (10).
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