idiographic and nomothetic

• the idiographic approach focuses more on the individual case as a means of understanding behaviour, it focuses on recognition of uniqueness, uses subjective experiences
• the nomothetic approach aims to study human behaviour through the development of general principles and universal laws, attempts to generalise people, uses objective knowledge, based on numerical data
• features of idiographic approaches:

  • study of individuals - to better understand human behaviour
  • small numbers of participants
  • generalisations can be made, but focus is on understanding the individual
  • qualitative
  • subjective
• features of nomothetic approaches:

  • study large and varied groups
  • makes generalisations about what is typical in different aspects of human behaviour
  • quantitative
  • scientific methods
  • objective