Millar's Document Review Paper

Another aspect that remains open for criticism is if the author should have taken a cross-methodical approach and thus included a document review in his data acquisition. Millar describes that his original approach was to review video footage from the TRC hearings and then conduct interviews based on them. However he ultimately chose not to include these archival sources, as he found them to be insignificant to the local population (Millar 2010: 484-485). However the analysis of such material could have been highly beneficial to the overall findings, taking into account account that it is an unpretentious method of gathering information about the group and its setting (Marshall 1999: 107). Considering the fact that Millar conducted this study in 2010, five years after the final report of the TRC, meant that his interviewees were dependent on their memory when speaking about their experiences with the TRC (Millar 2010: 485). …show more content…
Another advantage of such document review would have been the accountability of the study as a whole - the reader could have easily gained access to documents such as the final TRC report presented to the UN and thus furthered their understanding on how the analysis is applicable to the data (Marshall 1999: 108). Lastly, it would have strengthened the study if Millar would have included more information about the obstacles he faced while being in the field. This could for example include the language barrier or the way he himself was perceived as a Western researches. The latter would be especially fascinating, as he describes the phenomenon of the elite TRC representatives being viewed as UN-sponsored Westerners (Millar 2010: 492) - it leaves the reader asking if he ever faced a similar stigmatization, that potentially had an impact on his