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Also, the bulk of the case study report will focus on in-depth descriptions of the person rather than on statistical analyses.
With that said some quantitative data may also be included in the write-up of a case study. As with other qualitative methods, a variety of different methods and tools can be used to collect information on the case. For instance, interviews, naturalistic observation, structured observation, psychological testing e. HM is one of the most notorious case studies in psychology. HM suffered from intractable and very severe epilepsy. The treatment was a success, in that it resolved his epilepsy and his IQ and personality were unaffected.
However, the doctors soon realized that HM exhibited a strange form of amnesia, called anterograde amnesia. HM was able to carry out a conversation and he could remember short strings of letters, digits, and words. Basically, his short term memory was preserved.
However, HM could not commit new events to memory. He lost the ability to transfer information from his short-term memory to his long term memory, something memory researchers call consolidation. So while he could carry on a conversation with someone, he would completely forget the conversation after it ended. It also suggested that the temporal lobes are particularly important for consolidating new information i. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim, and she was an early feminist who went on to make important contributions to the field of social work.
One of them was that for several weeks she was unable to drink any fluids. According to Freud,. She would take up the glass of water that she longed for, but as soon as it touched her lips she would push it away like someone suffering from hydrophobia. The patient had said nothing, as she had wanted to be polite. After giving further energetic expression to the anger she had held back, she asked for something to drink, drank a large quantity of water without any difficulty, and awoke from her hypnosis with the glass at her lips; and thereupon the disturbance vanished, never to return.
Furthermore, her recollection of the incident, along with her expression of the emotion she had repressed, caused the symptom to go away. As evidence for the theory, however, it is essentially worthless. Figure Case studies are useful because they provide a level of detailed analysis not found in many other research methods and greater insights may be gained from this more detailed analysis.
Case studies are also often the only way to study rare conditions because it may be impossible to find a large enough sample to individuals with the condition to use quantitative methods. Although at first glance a case study of a rare individual might seem to tell us little about ourselves, they often do provide insights into normal behavior. The case of HM provided important insights into the role of the hippocampus in memory consolidation. However, it is important to note that while case studies can provide insights into certain areas and variables to study, and can be useful in helping develop theories, they should never be used as evidence for theories.
In other words, case studies can be used as inspiration to formulate theories and hypotheses, but those hypotheses and theories then need to be formally tested using more rigorous quantitative methods. Case studies lack the proper controls that true experiments contain. As such they suffer from problems with internal validity, so they cannot be used to determine causation.
The fact is, with case studies we cannot rule out these sorts of alternative explanations. So as with all observational methods case studies do not permit determination of causation. In addition, because case studies are often of a single individual, and typically a very abnormal individual, researchers cannot generalize their conclusions to other individuals. Recall that with most research designs there is a trade-off between internal and external validity, with case studies, however, there are problems with both internal validity and external validity. So there are limits both to the ability to determine causation and to generalize the results.
A final limitation of case studies is that ample opportunity exists for the theoretical biases of the researcher to color or bias the case description. In one study, they examined Social Security records to show that women with the names Virginia, Georgia, Louise, and Florence were especially likely to have moved to the states of Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida, respectively. As with naturalistic observation, measurement can be more or less straightforward when working with archival data. For example, counting the number of people named Virginia who live in various states based on Social Security records is relatively straightforward.
In the s, healthy male college students had completed an open-ended questionnaire about difficult wartime experiences. More pessimistic people tend to blame themselves and expect long-term negative consequences that affect many aspects of their lives, while more optimistic people tend to blame outside forces and expect limited negative consequences. To obtain a measure of explanatory style for each participant, the researchers used a procedure in which all negative events mentioned in the questionnaire responses, and any causal explanations for them were identified and written on index cards.
giuliettasprint.konfer.eu: Observing Animal Behaviour: Design and Analysis of Quantitive Controls (): Marian Stamp Dawkins: Books. This book introduces the power of observation prior to, and sometimes instead of, experimental manipulation in the study of animal behaviour. It starts with.
These were given to a separate group of raters who rated each explanation in terms of three separate dimensions of optimism-pessimism. These ratings were then averaged to produce an explanatory style score for each participant.
The primary result was that the more optimistic the men were as undergraduate students, the healthier they were as older men. Just as structured observation requires specifying the behaviors of interest and then noting them as they occur, content analysis requires specifying keywords, phrases, or ideas and then finding all occurrences of them in the data. These occurrences can then be counted, timed e. Chiang, Dana C. Skip to content 6. According to Freud, She would take up the glass of water that she longed for, but as soon as it touched her lips she would push it away like someone suffering from hydrophobia.
Key Takeaways There are several different approaches to observational research including naturalistic observation, participant observation, structured observation, case studies, and archival research. Naturalistic observation is used to observe people in their natural setting, participant observation involves becoming an active member of the group being observed, structured observation involves coding a small number of behaviors in a quantitative manner, case studies are typically used to collect in-depth information on a single individual, and archival research involves analysing existing data.
Exercises Practice: Find and read a published case study in psychology. Then do the following: Describe one problem related to internal validity. Describe one problem related to external validity. Generate one hypothesis suggested by the case study that might be interesting to test in a systematic single-subject or group study. Rosenhan, D. On being sane in insane places. Science, , — Social Psychology Quarterly, 71 , — The pace of life in 31 countries.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 30 , — Social and emotional messages of smiling: An ethological approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37 , — Conditioned emotional reactions.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3 , 1— Five lectures on psycho-analysis. New York, NY: Norton. Implicit egotism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14 , — Pessimistic explanatory style is a risk factor for physical illness: A thirty-five year longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55 , 23— Previous Section.
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For example, shyness , test anxiety , and depression can all be appraised by means of paper-and-pencil tests which yield numerical scores representing the extent of shyness, anxiety, etc. A psychologist interested in the relationship between test anxiety and grade point average would collect the appropriate quantitative information on each of these two variables and conduct statistical tests that would reveal the strength or absence of the relationship.
The term "qualitative research methods" refers to a variety of ways of collecting information that is less amenable to quantification and statistical manipulation. Qualitative methods differ from quantitative methods largely because their ultimate purpose is different. The goal of qualitative research is to arrive at some general, overall appreciation of a phenomenon—highlighting interesting aspects and perhaps generating specific hypotheses.
In contrast, quantitative research is typically designed to test relatively specific predictions. Qualitative research thus provides an initial description of a phenomenon, whereas quantitative research aims to investigate its various details.
Some examples of qualitative methods include focus groups, surveys, naturalistic observations, interviews, content analyses of archival material, and case studies. What these approaches share is an emphasis on revealing some general pattern by observing a few particular cases. Focus groups are commonly used by marketing or advertising agencies to derive information about people's reactions to a particular product or event.
A small number of people, often fewer than 10, are asked their opinions. A focus group engaged by the marketing department of a breakfast cereal company, for example, might be asked how appealing the cereal looks, whether the box would make them consider buying it, and how agreeable the cereal's texture and taste were. A facilitator would encourage the participants to share their opinions and reactions in the context of a group discussion.
The session would be taped and transcribed. Researchers would then use the information to make their product more appealing. Naturalistic observations involve studying individuals in their natural environments. One common variant consists of participant observation research in which the researcher, in order to understand it, becomes part of a particular group.
George Kirkham was a criminologist who took a year off from his university position to work as a police patrolman. He then wrote about the changes in his attitudes and values that occurred when he worked in high-crime neighborhood. There are several drawbacks to qualitative methods of inquiry. Firstly, the results are always subject to personal biases. A person who is interviewed, for example, is stating their version of the truth.
Personal perspectives invariably affect what the individual believes and understands. Similarly, the results reported by the researcher conducting a naturalistic observation will be tainted by that researcher's individual interpretation of the events. Further, while case studies are rich sources of information about individuals, it is risky to assume that the information can be generalized to the rest of the population.