case studies & content analysis Flashcards
define case study
an in depth investigation, description & analysis of single individual, group, institution or event
what does conducting a case study involve
- usually involves production of qualitative data
- may construct case history of individual (eg. interview, observation, questionnaire or combination)
- individual may be subject to experimental/psychological testing to assess what they’re capable, possibly producing quantitative data
- often longitudinal
- may involve gathering additional data form family/friend
case studies AO3 +)
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P: offer rich, detailed insights which may highlight unusual/atypical behaviour
E/T: often preferred over more ‘superficial’ data collected from experiments & questionnaires, for example
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P: contribute to understanding of ‘typical’ functioning
E/T: eg. case of HM was significant as demonstrated typical memory processing (existence of separate stores in STM & LTM)
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P: case studies may generate hypotheses for future studies
E/T: one contradictory finding may result in revision of entire theory
case studies AO3 -)
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P: generalisation of findings is an issue
E/T: small sample size
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P: information in final report based on subjective selection & interpretation of researcher
E: personal accounts from participants & their family/friends also prone to inaccuracy & memory decay (eg. childhood stories
T: means evidence from case studies has low validity
describe content analysis
- form of observational research
- people are studied indirectly via communications they’ve produced
- forms of communication eg. spoken, written or broader examples from media
- aim is to summarise & describe this communication in systematic way so overall conclusions can be drawn
what is the first stage of content analysis
= coding
- some data sets being analysed are large (eg. transcripts of lengthy interviews), so there is a need to categorise information into meaningful units
- may involve counting up number of times certain word/phrase appears in text, producing form of quantitative data
- eg. newspaper reports analysed for number of times derogatory terms used for mentally ill individuals (eg. crazy, mad)
what is thematic analysis
form of content analysis but outcome is qualitative
main process of thematic analysis
= involves identification of themes
- theme = any idea, implicit or explicit, that is recurrent
- themes likely to be more descriptive than coding units
- eg. people with mental health issues may be misrepresented in newspaper as ‘threat to well-being of our children’ or ‘drain on NHS resources’, these themes may be developed into broader categories eg. ‘stereotyping’ or ‘treatment’ of people with mental health issues may - once researcher satisfied that themes cover most aspects of data they’re analysing, a new set of data is collected to test validity of themes & categories
- if these explain data adequately, researcher writes up final report based
- often uses direct quotes from data to illustrate each theme
content analysis AO3 +)
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P: useful as it can circumnavigate many ethical issues often associated with psychological research
E: much of the material an analyst wishes to study may already exist within public domain - eg. TV adverts, films
T: no issues with obtaining permission & these communications are high in external validity, & can access data of sensitive nature with ‘authors’ consent
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P: content analysis is flexible
E/T: may produce qualitative & quantitative data depending on aims of research
content analysis AO3 -)
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P: people studied indirectly
E: communications they produce usually analysed outside of context it occurred in
T: possible for researcher to attribute opinions/motivations to speaker/writer which weren’t intended originally
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P: most modern analysts are clear about how own biases/preconceptions influence research process, often making reference to these in final report, but content analysis may still suffer for lack of objectivity
E/T: especially when more descriptive forms of thematic analysis are used
