Documentary analysis in CAM research: Part 1

The analysis of documents can provide insights into important social and political issues related to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This paper identifies some important sources of documents and outlines some of the advantages and disadvantages of using documents in social research. A number of analytic strategies are illustrated with examples to demonstrate the potential for documentary analysis to answer particular CAM-related research questions. These strategies are described as quantitative content analysis, qualitative descriptive analysis, qualitative interpretive analysis and semiotic analysis. It is argued that documents are a convenient source of data and that their analysis can enrich our understanding of CAM. Part 1 covers quantitative and qualitative strategies and Part 2 focuses on semiotic analysis.