Documentary analysis

Documentary analysis enables the use of a variety of pre-existing documentation. May (1997) summarises the potential value of documents stating:

“they can tell us a great deal about the way in which events were constructed at the time, the reasons employed, as well as providing materials upon which to base further research investigations” (157)

In order to develop a picture of existing practice, it was necessary to consider artefacts that had informed the development of mechanisms. Other methods such as observations and interviews provided a considerable amount of information about how mechanisms were understood currently, but many of the individuals involved in the development of mechanisms were not accessible as direct

participants for the research. Policy documents and guidance provided insight into the process through which mechanisms were constructed. Documentary analysis offered an insight into the official and historical development of student voice mechanisms at the macro level of government and institutional policy and the opportunity to trace these down to practice.

As well as providing some insight into the development of student voice

mechanisms. These took the form of ‘official’ artefacts such as the NSS, local course evaluation surveys and minutes of staff-student committees in addition to ‘unofficial’ documents such as blogs associated with student protest and students’ union election manifestos. These sources offered some insight into practice within student voice mechanisms and, at times, to the imperatives and ideologies that informed particular practices.

The documentary analysis that took place was by necessity selective in the time available. However, it was possible to be flexible with the choices of documents included in the study, to follow up on leads when participants in interviews

mentioned particular documents and to seek documentary evidence for common forms of student voice such as the NSS and students’ union election manifestos. In the context of this research, the nature of documents as biased and selective was viewed as a benefit rather than a hindrance. As unsolicited documents, the artefacts were written with a particular purpose and audience in mind. Documentary sources in this context represent a source of data that cannot be amended or

changed as a result of being researched (Burgess, 1990: 124). This provided a balance to the more direct research methods included in the study, for which the possibility that the participant may knowingly or unknowingly alter their response due to being involved in the research, had to be accounted.

Drawing on the format of Table 1: Student voice mechanisms (Chapter 1), the following table illustrates the artefacts that were considered as part of the study. Analysis of these informed the literature review and enabled the development of a

greater understanding of the nature of documents and how they frame student voice activity in Chapter 4.

Table 4: Opportunities for documentary analysis

Official Collective (OC)

Student Representation Systems (University and Student Union policy

documents, student representative handbooks and guidance for students

and staff, minutes from student representative meetings)

QAA Student Engagement chapter of the quality code

NUS, HEA and other guidance

Official Individual (OI)

National Student Survey and promotional material

Office of the Independent Adjudicator

Unofficial Collective (UC)

Student protests (NUS and press reports, blogs from university

occupations)

Unofficial Individual (UI)

Students’ union election manifestos

The collection of documents that informed, and were produced by student voice mechanisms, provided an initial range of evidence from which to begin to develop a framework of official and unofficial activity at the institution. Prior (2003) suggests that documents can serve to “make ‘things’ visible and more traceable” (87). The framework illuminated a variety of different phenomena and practices both in institutions and more widely.

A number of researchers stress the importance of seeing texts as situated in a context. For example Foucault (1991) sees documents as part of the way in which knowledge, practice and ‘truth’ is produced, studying them:

“in order to study this interplay between ‘code’ that rules ways of doing things (how people are to be graded and examined, things and signs classified, individuals trained etc.) and a production of true discourse which serve to found, justify and provide reasons and principles of these ways of doing things” (79)

In this way, Foucault sees documents as traces of the way in which particular practices and ideologies are founded, developed and interpreted. Prior (2003) advocates the consideration of documents as part of “fields, frames and networks of

action” rather than as static, pre-defined artefacts (2). In this context, Prior stresses

the importance of taking documents in context and in conjunction with other evidence.

Fairclough (2001: 97-98) developed a model for the analysis of discourse as an approach to unpicking the underlying assumptions, imperatives and ideologies in a text. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) recognises the complex layers of meaning in a text, how meaning is constructed and what this says about the wider social and political context in which it is located. Fairclough’s model provides an analytical approach to understanding the relationship between language and other aspects of social life such as power relations, crises and social change.

Practically, CDA involves the analysis of texts at three levels; “description of text, interpretation of the relationship and interaction, and explanation of the relationship between interaction and social context” (2001: 91). In his detailed explanation of the

process, Fairclough suggests that by considering the properties of a text, such as the vocabulary, grammar and text organisation, it is possible to reveal layers of meaning that can serve to indicate the underpinning ideologies and power relationships evident in a text. For example, Fairclough (1993) used CDA to consider aspects of authority and identity in two undergraduate university

prospectuses, one from 1967-8 and the other from 1993. The focus of the 1967-8 prospectus is primarily for information transfer to students whereas a similar document in 1993 has a much clearer focus on promotion and ‘selling’ the institution to the student (1993: 153-157). His analysis shows how the text is a realisation of both the underpinning processes of production and the ideologies and shifts in ideologies that underpin the production of each text.

Elements of CDA were used as an approach to analysis in order to critically explore the texts and interviews. In order to gauge the potential of CDA as an approach, an exploratory analysis was conducted based on the NSS questionnaire (APPENDIX C: COPY OF THE NSS SURVEY QUESTIONS). Aspects of this are included in Chapter 4, and the full analysis is included as an appendix (APPENDIX D: CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY). Using Fairclough’s model, the survey questions were analysed in order to consider the vocabulary, grammar and textual mechanisms used. The resulting analysis highlighted some underpinning imperatives that have been included in Chapter 4. The use of elements of CDA to supplement the thematic analysis, of the data and

the balance between the use of CDA and thematic analysis is discussed later in the chapter.