case study

• -          case studies typically involve the in depth study over time over case which is usually centred on a single individual or a small group data can be gathered using a variety of methods like interviews observations psychological tests and analysis of records like medical records
• -          the research is also often focused on a particular aspect of behaviour and the person of interest is usually someone who is unique in some way for example someone with brain damage like HM

   
• -          case studies provide an effective way of gaining insight into the personal experiences of a person under study and suggesting new avenues of research

   
• + an advantage of case studies is that they gather rich and interesting data-the data they produce has a high degree of realism and can therefore provide valuable new insight into the phenomenon being studied which might not be accessible by any other form of investigation-for example important information about brain function has been found from case studies of brain damage individuals like HM
• 1)a strength of case studies is that they allow us to study things that otherwise we may not be able to study because of ethical reasons-we couldn't study certain things ethically in experiments for example the study of the Czech twins by Koluchiva who found that the suffered from privation and did not from an attachment with a primary care giver – we couldn’t manipulate a study to test this
• 2) but these sensitive areas are important to study to give us true insight into human behaviour as one case study can be used to contradict a theory for example like the case of KF which contradicted the idea that information had to be rehearsed in order to pass into our long term memory
• I disadvantage of case studies is that findings may be subjective case studies are often based on lengthy in depth interviews and observations during which relationships may be established between a researcher on the individual being studied-this is a weakness because the findings will be a personal view and likely to be biassed meaning that the findings will not necessarily be true and a valid reflection of the behaviour being studied and therefore we can question the conclusions drawn