CASE STUDY

 What it is?

A case study is an in-depth study of one person, group, or event. In a case study, nearly every aspect of the subject's life and history is analyzed to seek patterns and causes of behavior. Case studies can be used in a variety of fields including psychology, medicine, education, anthropology, political science, and social work.

    It is a research methodology, typically seen in social and life sciences. There is no one definition of case study research.1 However, very simply… ‘a case study can be defined as an intensive study about a person, a group of people or a unit, which is aimed to generalize over several units’.1 A case study has also been described as an intensive, systematic investigation of a single individual, group, community or some other unit in which the researcher examines in-depth data relating to several variables.

Types of Case Study:

There are a few different types of case studies that psychologists and other researchers might utilize:

• Collective case studies: These involve studying a group of individuals. Researchers might study a group of people in a certain setting or look at an entire community of people.
• Descriptive case studies: These involve starting with a descriptive theory. The subjects are then observed and the information gathered is compared to the pre-existing theory.
• Explanatory case studies: These are often used to do causal investigations. In other words, researchers are interested in looking at factors that may have actually caused certain things to occur.
• Exploratory case studies: These are sometimes used as a prelude to further, more in-depth research. This allows researchers to gather more information before developing their research questions and hypotheses.
• Instrumental case studies: These occur when the individual or group allows researchers to understand more than what is initially obvious to observers.
• Intrinsic case studies: This type of case study is when the researcher has a personal interest in the case. Jean Piaget's observations of his own children are good examples of how an intrinsic cast study can contribute to the development of a psychological theory