lavarenne and use of case studies

Question 1

background to lavarenne’s study

Answer 1

a session known as the Thursday group, a group of patients that were mostly schizophrenic who met every week.
Purpose of the group was to support patients using group therapy by giving the, some structure to help them cope with their illness.
10 members, who were referred from various local out-patient and in-patient services in the area, and the group was made up of member who had been attending from between 3 weeks and 22 years.

Question 2

what was the aim of lavarenne’s study

Answer 2

to use the group to provide a firm boundary so that members of the group would interact and participate even if they themselves had fragile ego boundaries
to look for evidence of the groups providing such boundaries

Question 3

what was the method of the case study for lavarenne

Answer 3

• reported on a specific session with 6 patients present, where the group members were going to break for more seven days over Christmas
• all members of the group were on drug treatment
• each member of the group could participate as much or as little as they wanted to
• the key theme that the leaders noted in the session was the ‘fragile ego boundaries’ - breakdown in the line that people draw between real and unreal

Question 4

results of lavarenne’s study

Answer 4

Brett, SZ, Irish-catholic who gave out christmas cards was interpreted as doing so to solidify his ego boundaries
Andy, SZ, mother, seen as sexually repressed and self-sacrificing which shows she is able to deal with fragile ego boundaries

Question 5

conclusions

Answer 5

each of the 6 members talked about issues that related to efforts to hold themselves together. the group provided a boundary between self and others, which meant a relationship between self and others could take place

Question 6

evaluation of the study

Answer 6

• good insight into the behaviour of patients involved in generating rich in-depth data, the leaders made notes about what happened in the group session and after, and data came from the group itself
• valid, study took place in pps natural group setting and data was not interpreted by the researchers
• ethical as informed consent and RTW were not hard to achieve and there was no need for deceit

Question 7

weaknesses of the study

Answer 7

• reliant on the interpretation of the researcher
• short case study of 45 minutes, using one means of data gathering, and so triangulation was not possible and the data may have been subjectively or selectively remembered
• small number of pps and unlikely to represent the whole target population, usefulness is questionable
• difficult to repeat to test for reliability and not easily generalisable due to nature of case studies

Question 8

case studies

Answer 8

involve studying individuals or small groups with some kind of unique characteristics or experience in-depth. in clinical case studies may be of people with rare symptoms and often the data gathered with be qualitative, allowing an in–depth analysis of the group. allows for highly valid conclusions about the group being studied

Question 9

strengths of a case study in clinical

Answer 9

• good at finding out detail and depth about an individual or small group and such detail means rich data to draw conclusions from
• look at rare situations and individuals where samples of such are difficult to find
• tend to use more than one way of collecting data e.g., triangulation, for reliability and validity

Question 10

weaknesses of a case study in clinical

Answer 10

• focus is on one individual or small group, and so generalising the findings are not possible. samples are also very limited
• often carried out by one researcher or a small team, and so they will get to know the individual very well, which may cause bias in the recorded data