Recognising diverse groups within society is a vital part of policy research and analysis, yet few texts have drawn together the breadth of experiences of welfare provision from a diverse group of citizens. This book fills this gap, by exploring how diverse citizens’ experience welfare provision. It aims to promote debate about the importance of social divisions in society and to address the gaps in research, in relation to race, ethnicity, disability, gender and LGBTQ. It comes at a crucial time as we emerge out of a decade of austerity, a global pandemic and Brexit, where issues of diversity have been at the forefront of debates and renews the call for analysis within social policy, particularly on issues of diversity in the 21st century context.

Students and researchers have an abundance of materials and sources available to them via the internet for use in their projects. However, there is little practical guidance available on the fundamentals of performing qualitative research with documents. This valuable book enables readers to undertake high-quality, robust research using documents as data. Encouraging critical consideration of research design, the book guides readers step-by-step through the process of planning and undertaking a research project based on documentary analysis. It covers selecting a research topic and sample through to analysing and writing up the data. The book includes: * a wealth of case studies demonstrating how lessons can be applied in practice; * summary boxes and suggestions for further reading in each chapter to guide learning; * helpful online resources to facilitate designing your own research. Accessible and comprehensive, this book will be invaluable for both students and researchers alike who are new to documentary analysis. All the resources included in this book are available to download on the book's webpage at https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/doing-your-research-project-with-documents/online-resources. Look for the Online Resources logo throughout the book.

In today's society we increasingly create and consume written content and images. This includes a range of sources, from social media posts to records held within organisations, and everything in between, including news articles, blogs, shopping lists and official government documents. Critically reading these 'documents' can help us to understand a huge amount about society. Doing Excellent Social Research with Documents includes guidance on how to 'read between the lines', and provides an overview of six research projects which use documents as data. Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138038653_oachapter8.pdf

In today's society we increasingly create and consume written content and images. This includes a range of sources, from social media posts to records held within organisations, and everything in between, including news articles, blogs, shopping lists and official government documents. Critically reading these 'documents' can help us to understand a huge amount about society. Doing Excellent Social Research with Documents includes guidance on how to 'read between the lines', and provides an overview of six research projects which use documents as data. Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138038653_oachapter8.pdf