Case studies and content analysis

• What is a case study?

  An in-depth invesigation of an individual, institution or event
• What are two strengths of using a case study?

  1. provides rich, in-depth information - gives new insight into unusual and atypical forms of behaviour

  2. may generate hypotheses for future study and trigger the revision of an entire theory
• What are two limitations of using a case study?

  1. difficult to generalise from individual cases

  2. information is based on subjective selection and interpretation of researcher
• What is content analysis?

  A kind of observational study of qualitative data in which behaviour is observed indirectly via communications (e.g. emails, spoken interaction, examples from the media etc.) can involve either qualitative or quantitative analysis or both
• What is a quantitative way of analysing the data?

  coding - the analysis of communication by placing into categories and then counting
• What is a qualitative way of analysing the data?

  thematic analysis - involves identifying implicit/explicit ideas within data (often after coding)
• What are the steps of carrying out a content analysis?

  1. collect data

  2. researcher reads through and familiarises themselves with data

  3. identify coding units

  4. re-analyse data and apply coding units

  5. tally the number of times a coding unit appears
• Describe how to carry out a thematic analysis

  researcher initially analyses data using coding - they would then review the data and look for emergent themes
• What are two strengths of using content analysis?

  1. high ecological validity - based on observation of what people actually do

  2. when resources can be accessed by others the content analysis can be replicated - tested for reliability
• What are two limitations of using content analysis?

  1. observer bias - different observers may interpret meaning of behavioural categories differently

  2. culture biased - interpretation of written or verbal content will be affected by the language and culture of observer