# Researching teaching-learning concepts in the health professions using document analyses?

## TL;DR

This paper discusses how document analysis can be used as a research method to study teaching and learning in health professions.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a case study of a two-stage document analysis method in health professions education research.

## Key findings

- Document analysis is a valuable method for understanding teaching and learning practices in health professions.
- Non-textual and multimodal documents are becoming increasingly important in research.
- Document analysis is often part of a multi-method approach in educational research.

## Abstract

This article explores the question of how document analyses can be used as a research methodology in academic training resp. teaching and learning research. Documents are texts of different origins, types and quality that are not influenced by researchers, were not created for the research itself and can therefore be understood as objectifications of social reality.

Therefore, they contain research-relevant information for which certain conditions of origin are unknown at the same time. In academic teaching, documents such as examination regulations often standardise or structure the practice of teaching and learning and are therefore particularly relevant for academic training and teaching-learning research.

The decisive factor for the use of document analysis is the research interest. Documents are often used as a first or additional data source. Document analyses are then usually part of a multi-method approach or are used in preparation for further research steps or to examine relevant research results with regard to their significance. The increase in non-textual, multimodal documents means that document analyses are becoming increasingly important as an independent method in research. The article reflects on the method using a case study of a two-stage document analysis in the form of a website analysis and a textual document analysis.