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Unit-10: Types of Data and Their Sources

use letters specially. According to Thomas and Nainki the farmers of Poland firstly uses the letter in their notes
study. Personal letters provide important information in terms of study. they help in understanding
the thinking and view of letter writers. Letters are written to our close persons. therefore, a person
expresses his important ideas, emotions, and important incidents of life, experiences, love, hate and
his plans in it. Description of political incidents and social life is found in the letters. things related
to intimate side of life is written in letters. the important things related to family stress, marriage
relations, sexual imbalance, separation, marriage separation can be known easily through the medium
of letters. Since letters are personal and confidential therefore practical and reliable material is obtained
from them.
In terms of study their utility is limited. The reason for this is that firstly, it is difficult to attain as it is
personal. secondly, in letters do not get the details of full context of incidents and in addition a lack
of pattern is found in describing incidents. thirdly, incomplete information is found in the a letters
on the basis of which it is difficult to find out scientific conclusion. Fourthly, if the purpose of writing
letter is any convincing work then it will be difficult to find out the reliability of things described in
it. therefore, a bias and partiality is found in the material collected by the letters.
(2) Diary—Many people write their day-to-day incidents in the form of diary. since diary is completely
a confidential document therefore it is a reliable source to know the secret things of the life of a person.
John Maze wrote, “Diaries mostly to expose the secrets since on one side they do not have the fear
to be exposed in front of public and on the other side incidents and activities are written very clearly
in them at the time of their occurrence .the importance of diary as a source of data collection in the
social research is automatically gets cleared from this statement of Maze. secret data are found from
it, which is relatively more reliable since the writer accurately depicts the incidents in the diary. He
does not write a diary for the purpose of exhibition or publishing. the diaries written in the form of
memoirs for the work of great personalities, travel-description, memoirs of prison life, fight or any
other phenomenal incidents are very helpful in research work. right information can be got from the
diary since the incidents are not presented distorted in them. this is an important source of getting
reliable and confidential data.
Although diary is very important in social research, yet it has some limitations and drawbacks. Alport
wrote, “in diary incidents are completely accepted and those descriptions of people or conditions of
whose existence and character the writer had only a little idea or estimation are mostly forgotten" John
Maize says , “ Diaries can tell briefly the dramatic and struggling part of life but there is no proper
place for peaceful and happy moments of many months . “ Besides these drawbacks some other
drawbacks of data–collection through diaries are. there is no proper sequence of incidents found
in them. if the writer has just a latent desire of publishing the diary then there is a sense of writing
incidents out of perspective. In that case it is difficult to obtain scientific conclusion on the basis of
data gathered by the diary.
(3) life-history—Life -History is very important as a secondary source of data collection. John
Maize wrote, “in real meaning life-history means any descriptive autobiography. in simple meaning
it can be used for any life-related material. “in other words we can say that meaning of Life-History
is with any type of any life-related material. Basically, there are two forms of life-history, first,
Autobiography which a person writes about himself and second, Biography which a person writes
about life-related incidents of another person. Normally life-history is written for any person who
has gained popularity.
Life-history in the form of autobiography can be written by himself or by some other person. Both
these are the important source of secondary data-collection. Life-history of any great person helps
in understanding the social, financial, political, cultural, and different types of incidents of his time.
from life-histories the social situations and problems of a particular era can be understood properly.
in india, life-history of social-reformers has helped a lot to understand and study related to Hindu
society and the prevailing evils in it.

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