documentary method

is a psychological process consisting of our daily efforts to construct a world we are at home in, a world that can be taken-for-granted.

Garfinkel suggests that we are all constantly making use of the documentary method in our daily lives to create a 'taken-for-granted' world which we feel we 'know' and can be 'at home' in. (NET)

is a psychological process whereby individuals bring order to, or make sense of their social world by selecting facts, submitting them to the patterns they seem to hold, and then using that as a framework for interpreting new facts.

Garfinkel suggests that the way individuals bring order to, or make sense of their social world is through a psychological process, which he calls 'the documentary method'. This method firstly consist of selecting certain facts from a social situation, which seem to conform to a pattern and then making sense of these facts in terms of the pattern. Once the pattern has been established, it is used as a framework for interpreting new facts, which arise within the situation.' (NET)

documentary method, n.Definitions

documentary method