case study

Examples of case study in the following topics:

• Case Studies

  • A case study is a method of obtaining in-depth information on a person, group or phenomenon to provide descriptions of specific or rare cases.
  • Case studies may be prospective or retrospective; prospective studies feature criteria that are established and include additional cases that meet those criteria as they become available, while retrospective studies use criteria to select cases from historical records.
  • The most common techniques used to collect data for case studies are:
  • A researcher cannot draw cause and effect relationships from case studies.
  • Case studies also cannot test hypotheses.

• Descriptive Research

  • Research studies that do not test specific relationships between variables are called descriptive studies.
  • These studies are used to describe general or specific behaviors and attributes that are observed and measured.
  • Often a researcher will begin with a non-experimental approach, such as a descriptive study, to gather more information about the topic before designing an experiment or correlational study to address a specific hypothesis.
  • One important kind of descriptive research in psychology is the case study, which uses interviews, observation, or records to gain an in-depth understanding of a single person, group, or phenomenon.
  • Although case studies cannot be generalized to the overall population (as can experimental research), nor can they provide predictive power (as can correlational research), they can provide extensive information for the development of new hypotheses for future testing and provide information about a rare or otherwise difficult-to-study event or condition.

• Methods for Researching Human Development

  • To study changes in individuals over time, developmental psychologists use systematic observation, including naturalistic or structured observation; self-reports, which could be clinical interviews or structured observation; clinical or case study methods; and ethnography or participant observation.
  • Three research methods used include the experimental, correlational, and case study approach.
  • In a case study, developmental psychologists collect a great deal of information from one individual in order to better understand physical and psychological changes over his or her lifespan.
  • Regardless of whether studies employ the experimental, correlational, or case study methodology, they can use research designs or logical frameworks to make key comparisons within research studies.
  • Microgenetic design studies the same cohort over a short period of time.

• Psychology and the Scientific Method

  • For example, a researcher may question whether there is a relationship between the amount of studying a person does and the grade he or she achieves; a hypothesis might propose that the more a student studies, the higher his or her grades are.
  • The data collected during a research study would aim to prove or disprove this hypothesis.
  • Several types of studies exist within the scientific method—experiments, descriptive studies, case studies, surveys, and non-descriptive studies.
  • A case study covers one specific example in which something unusual has occurred.
  • This is often done in extreme or rare cases, usually with a single subject.

• Psychology and the Scientific Method: From Theory to Conclusion

  • Several types of studies exist within the scientific method—experiments, descriptive studies, case studies, surveys, and non-descriptive studies.
  • Descriptive studies describe the nature of the relationship between the intended variables, without looking at cause or effect.
  • A case study covers one specific example in which something unusual has occurred.
  • This is often done in extreme or rare cases, usually with a single subject.
  • Non-descriptive studies use correlational methods to predict the relationship between two (or more) intended variables.

• Evaluating the Psychodynamic Approach to Personality

  • The psychodynamic approach to the study of personality has many historical advantages but also many recently-discovered limitations.
  • Freud completed the entirety of his research using case studies of pathology in human adults.
  • He did an entirely qualitative study of the human mind, resulting in theories that were not falsifiable, but rather, open for interpretation.
  • Scientists have brought two of these methods into question: his lack of research on children and his lack of empirical study of adults.
  • Scientific research using data-based studies, meta-analysis, and child psychology continue to bring many of Freud's qualitative assumptions into question.

• Genetics, the Brain, and Personality

  • In the field of behavioral genetics, the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart—a well-known study of the genetic basis for personality—conducted research with twins from 1979 to 1999.
  • Many personality studies today investigate the activation and expression of genes and how they relate to personality.
  • One of the first documented cases that demonstrated the link between personality and the brain was that of Phineas Gage.
  • In this case, more ice cream is sold during the hot summer months—the same time that people are more likely to go swimming.
  • The case of Phineas Gage was one of the first indicators of a biological basis for personality.

• Gene-Environment Correlations: Nature or Nurture?

  • In other words, the person's environment, particularly in the case of children, is largely determined by the parent's genetic characteristics.
  • Adoption and twin studies can help make sense of the influence of genes and the environment.
  • Studies of adult twins are used to investigate which traits are heritable.
  • Twins raised apart tend to be similar in intelligence and, in some cases, life events and circumstance, when studied years later, even when raised separately.
  • Adoption studies make a strong case for the influence of environment, whereas twin studies make a strong case for genetic influence.

• Introduction to Language

  • Language is the ability to produce and comprehend spoken and written words; linguistics is the study of language.
  • Language is the ability to produce and comprehend both spoken and written (and in the case of sign language, signed) words.
  • Language is such a special topic that there is an entire field, linguistics, devoted to its study.
  • Phonetics is the study of individual speech sounds; phonology is the study of phonemes, which are the speech sounds of an individual language.
  • This diagram outlines the various subfields of linguistics, the study of language.

• Research Methods for Evaluating Treatment Efficacy

  • Quantitative methods include randomly controlled clinical trials, correlational studies over the course of counseling, and laboratory studies about specific counseling processes and outcome variables.
  • Qualitative methods may involve conducting, transcribing, and coding interviews; transcribing and/or coding therapy sessions; analyzing single counseling sessions or counseling cases; or using observations made and reported by the therapist.
  • A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a type of scientific (often medical) experiment, where the people being studied are randomly allocated to one or another of the different treatments under study.
  • Random assignment of intervention is done after subjects have been assessed for eligibility and recruited, but before the intervention to be studied begins.
  • A meta-analysis comprises statistical methods for contrasting and combining results from different treatment-focused studies in the hope of identifying patterns among study results, sources of disagreement among those results, or other interesting relationships that may come to light in the context of multiple studies.