Case studies and content analysis
- Case studies
- Case study Evaluation
- content analysis
- content analysis evaluation
- to study a case in psych is to provide an in-depth analysis of an individual group, institution or event
- case studies usually involve the production of qualitative data
- they often involve analysis of unusual individuals or events, e.g. a person with a rare disorder or sequence of event that led to the 2011 London riots.
- case histories will be formed using questionnaires, interviews, observations, sometimes experimental/psychological testing to assess capabilities (quantitative data)
- case studies tend to take place over long periods of times (longitudinal) and may involve gathering additional data from family and friends of the individual as well as the person themselves.
- strengths
- rich- detailed insights which my shed light on very unusual forms of behaviour
- contribute to our understanding of normal functioning like in case of HM which was significant as it demonstrated typical memory processing.
- could generate hypothesis for future study
- weaknesses
- small, cannot generalise
- info that will be submitted into final report is based on subjective selection of data & interpretation of research
- low validity - personal accounts from friends/family could be inaccurate
= type of observational research where people are studied indirectly via communications they've produced.
- types of communications which may be subject to content analysis = spoken interaction (i.e. conversation, speech, presentation), written forms (i.e. tests, emails), media (i.e. books, magazines, TV shows, films)
- aim is to summarise & describe such communication in systematic way so conclusions can be drawn.
- Coding and quantitative data
- coding = initial stage of content analysis
- some data sets to be analysed may be especially large (e.g. transcripts of seven dozen lengthy interviews) & so it's needed to categories this info into meaningful units.
- may involve simply county up number of times specific word/phrase appears in text to produce form of quantitative data
- e.g. news paper report may be analysed for number of times derogatory terms for people with mental health issues are used such as 'crazy' / 'mad'
- thematic analysis and qualitative data
- thematic analysis = form of content analysis but outcome is qualitative.
- main process involves identification of themes.
- theme is content analysis = any idea, explicit/implicit, which is recurrent - in other words, which keeps 'cropping up' as part of communication being studied.
- likely to be more descriptive than coding units. e.g. people with mental health issues may be misrepresented in news as 'a threat to the well-being of our children' / 'a drain or resources of the NHS'.
- themes may made into broader categories e.g. 'control', 'stereotyping', 'treatment' of people with mental health issues
- once research is happy that themes they've developed cover most aspects of data they've analysed, they may collect new set of data to tests the validity of the themes & categories.
- assuming these explain new data adequately, researcher will write up final report, typically using direct quotes from data to illustrate each theme.
- strengths
- it can circumnavigate many of ethical issues normally associated with psych research - much material analyst may want to study will already exist within public domain as result, there's no issues obtaining permission
- such communication has benefit of high external validity & may access data of a sensitive nature provided the 'authors' consent to its use
- flexible in sense it may produce both qualitative and quantitative data depending on aims of research
- weaknesses
- people studied indirectly as result, communications produced are usually analysed outside context of which it occurred
- danger that researcher may attribute opinions & motivations to speaker/writer which weren't intended originally.
- may lack objectivity, especially when more descripted forms of thematic analysis are used.