Case studies and content analysis

Question 1

what is a case study

Answer 1

A case study is a detalled study into the life of a person which covers great detail into their background, It looks at the past and present behaviour of an individual to build up a case history hence provides qualitative data.

Question 2

what are some strengths of case studies? (evaluation)

Answer 2

-Detailed so able to gain in depth insight.
- Forms basis for future research.
- From studying unusual cases you are able to infer things about normal usual behaviour of humans.
- Permits investigation of situations that would be otherwise unethical or impractical.

Question 3

what are some limitations of case studies? (evaluation)

Answer 3

• Not generalisable to wider populations as data is only gathered from one person.
• Various interviewer biases are presented like social desirability bias (from the unique person’s side) and interpretative bias ( from the researcher’s side).
• Retrospective studies may rely on memory which can be inaccurate. - They are time consuming and difficult to replicate.

Question 4

what does conducting a content analysis involve?

Answer 4

Conducting a content analysis involves studying human behaviour indirectly by studying things that we produce e.g. TV adverts, newspapers. This allows us to have insight into the structured values, beliefs and prejudices of our society

Question 5

How to conduct a content analysis :

Answer 5

● Identify hypothesis that you will investigate.
● Create a coding system depending on what you are investigating e.g. 1= male, 2= female.
● Gather resources.
● Conduct content analysis and record data in a table.
● Analyse data which is descriptive and qualitative e.g. using ‘thematic analysis’- allows themes, patterns and trends to emerge in data.
● Write up a report in the format of a scientific report.

Question 6

what is coding?

Answer 6

The stage of a content analysis in which the communication to be studied is analysed by identifying each instance of the chosen categories (which may be words, sentences, phrases, etc.)

Question 7

what is thematic analysis?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

coding and quantitative data

Answer 8

Coding is the initial stage, where large data sets (e.g., interviews) are broken into meaningful units.
It may involve counting the frequency of specific words or phrases to quantify the data.
Example: analyzing how mental health terms are used in newspapers.

Question 9

thematic analysis and qualitative data

Answer 9

Focuses on identifying themes, recurring ideas in the communication.
These themes are more descriptive, such as how certain groups are represented in media.
Example: stereotypes about mental health in newspapers.
Once themes are identified, the researcher may collect new data to test the validity of these themes, typically using direct quotes for illustration.

Question 10

what are some strengths of content analysis (evaluation)

Answer 10

• Strong external validity as the data is already in the real world so it has high mundane realism.
• Produces large data set of both quantitative and qualitative data that is easy to analyse.
• Easy replication.
• Ethical issues like ‘right of privacy, confidentiality, informed consent’ are avoided as data is already in the public domain.

Question 11

what are some limitations of content analysis? (evaluation)

Answer 11

• Observer bias is presented but it can be eliminated by achieving inter-observer reliability.
• Content of choice to analyse can be biased by researcher.
• Interpretative bias
• the researcher may ignore some things but pay extra attention to others.