Public and historical documents
Historical and public documents are reports made by governments; companies; trade unions; schools; hospital trusts etc; therefore they can be contemporary (current) or historical (from the past).
Strengths of public and historical documents are:
- They are more than likely the only way we can gain insights into past events
- They allow comparisons over time for example birth; death and marriage rates
- They are useful when assessing the outcomes of various social policies such as raising the school leaving age
Weaknesses of public and historical documents
- The validity of the documents are open to question as they may have been written selectively
- The authenticity of a document is open to question as it might not have been written by the person it is attributed to; therefore undermining its reliability
- The documents content is open to misinterpretation
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