ABSTRACT
A structured and consistent approach to analysing documents, employing a robust methodology, will often lead to important insights into relevant criminological issues. There are several approaches that may be used to analyse documents and text-based data. Two popular qualitative methods are qualitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis. This chapter sets out some of the ways of thinking and types of questions that should be considered by any researcher seeking to make use of this method in order to understand language as a source of power in their data. It describes the 'critical analysis' as a reminder of one of the key underpinning concepts in good research. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) seeks primarily to review how social power is reproduced, represented and resisted in text and talk. While there are many forms of CDA, V. Jupp and C. Norris outline a CDA agenda for analysing documents.
