Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Egodocuments are texts in which an author writes about his or her own acts, thoughts and feelings, such as diaries, blogs, and memoirs. This chapter looks at how egodocuments can be (and are) used by military researchers. It concludes that it offers great research opportunities for any researcher despite scientific discipline or methodological background. All sorts of elements can be researched from paratext, theme and plot, to the psychology behind word usage, and both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used. Careful scoping and time and patience to collect the documents involved are essential ingredients for the successful military egodocument …

In this study, we look at all (n=15) military memoirs published between 2001 and 2010 in Britain about military participation in the Afghanistan conflict, to establish the factors which determine whether a military memoir becomes a best-seller (sales >10,000 copies), or not. We look at three aspects of the book: content (i.e. type of plot), cover (e.g. whether rank or the award of medals is mentioned) and author features (e.g. seniority, sex, co-authorship by another established writer, preface by well-known person), and analysed data on these aspects, and on sales figures, using SPSS. The results are interesting for the insight …