A2 RESEARCH METHODS - CASE STUDIES AND CONTENT/THEMATIC ANALYSIS

Question 1

Describe case studies

Answer 1

An in-depth study of an individual or small group who have a unique beh that researchers are interested in. Often involves collection of both qualitative and quantitative data using a no. of research methods including observations, questionnaires, interviews, experiments, psychometric tests, correlations etc

Examples include: KF, HM, Phineas Gage, Mead, Clive Wearing, David Reimer, Little Hans, Little Albert…

Question 2

Evaluate case studies

Answer 2

(+) Provides v detailed data; in-depth
(+) Allows unique beh.s that couldn’t be created artificially due to ethical/ practical reasons to be studied
(+) Have good potential theoretical value for refuting current theories
(-) The findings can’t be generalised to a large population
(+/-) Need ethical considerations for subjects of case studies e.g. give code names like KF, HM etc

Question 3

Describe content and thematic analysis

Answer 3

• A method of quantifying qualitative data through use of coding units; often used in media research e.g. adverts, TV programmes, magazines and articles, then turning that quantitative data back into qualitative data (themes)
• E.g. in the gender topic, Dunbar and Wainforth (1995) analysed the content of lonely hearts columns and found men tend to offer resources and look for attractiveness and vice versa

Question 4

Describe the process of content/thematic analysis - NOTES ARE MUCH BETTER NOW :)

Answer 4

1) Collect the qualitative data in the exp/ interviews etc
2) Establish vague categories that you may expect to be related to the topic, e.g. if you interviewed people about college, you’d establish categories like +ve bus experience, -ve bus experience, +canteen experience, -ve canteen experience etc
3) Read through the data and create a tally (this is the coding bit) of all the times your categories get mentioned ; this is turning your qualitative data into quantitative data
4) Establish which categories were popular and therefore became themes (turning your quantitative data back into qualitative data)
5) You could then analyse your established themes by breaking them down into smaller sub-categories and creating a tally for them (going back into quantitative data)
6) Establish any new themes that arose out of your further analysis (back into qualitative again)
7) You can now say that the main themes of your findings were…

Question 5

Evaluate content analysis

Answer 5

(+) easy to perform and cost effective
(+) reliable - coding systems allow for easy replication
(-) can be subjective as it’s down to how the researcher interprets the data
(-) descriptive not explanatory; doesn’t actually tell you why it happens, just that it does