20. Case Studies & Content Analysis (A2) Flashcards
What is a case study?
An in-depth investigation, description and analysis of a single individual, group, institution or event.
What type of situation are case studies usually studies of?
Case studies often involve analysis of unusual individuals or events however they may also concentrate on more typical cases.
What type of data does a case study typically produce?
Usually, but not exclusively, case study will produce qualitative data. Interviews, observations, questionnaires or a combination of these are used. You may even subject the person or group to psychological testing - this may produce quantitative data.
Over what time period do case studies usually occur?
Case studies tend to take place over a long period of time (longitudinal).
What are the strengths of case studies?
They offer rich detailed insights into atypical forms of behaviour
They contribute to our understanding of normal functioning
They may generate hypotheses for future study
One solitary contradiction found in a case study may lead to the revision of an entire theory
What are the limitations of case studies
Generalising the data is difficult bc you’re often working with small groups of atypical people
The information in the final report is subjectively chosen by the researcher
Personal accounts from participants or family and friends maybe subject to memory decay and inaccuracies reducing the validity of the evidence
What is content analysis?
A research technique that enables the indirect study of behaviour by examining communications the people produced, for example, in texts, emails, TV, film and other media.
What is the aim of content analysis?
To summarise and describe communication in a systematic way so overall conclusions can be drawn.
What is coding?
The stage of a content analysis in which the communication to be studied is analysed by identifying each instance of the chosen category (which may be words, sentences, phrases, etc).
What is the purpose of coding?
To break down extremely large data sets into categories so information is in meaningful units. This may involve simply counting the number of times a certain word was used within a text to produce quantitative data.
What is thematic analysis?
An inductive and qualitative approach to analysis that involves identifying implicit or explicit ideas within the data. Themes will often emerge once the data has been coded.
How may qualitative data produced from thematic analysis differ from quantitative data from coding?
Data from thematic analysis is likely to be more descriptive than that from coding.
What may the research do after finding all the themes to cover the content?
They may collect a new set of data to test the validity of the themes and categories. If the themes represent the data adequately the researcher will write up the final report using quotes from the data.
What are the strengths of content analysis?
It’s useful because it can circumnavigate ethical issues as much of the study material is already in the public domain
More sensitive communications still have the benefit of being high in external validity provided the author’s consent to its use
Content analysis is flexible as it can produce quantitative all qualitative data depending on the aim of the study.
What are the limitations of content analysis?
Because content analysis involves indirectly studying people and the communications they produce analysis of such communications outside of the context within which it was produced may lead to misinterpretation of the data
Content analysis may suffer from lack of objectivity on the part of the researcher when more descriptive forms of thematic analysis are used.
