Case Study Research in Psychology

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Psychological case studies focus on individuals, though different interpretations are possible that include context or time dimensions. They frequently share characteristics with case studies in other disciplines within social sciences whose focal points are description and analysis of contextual factors, social structures, and processes in order to reach a more global understanding of events.

Most psychological case studies are retrospective in style and follow an idiographic approach wherein both qualitative and quantitative proceedings are feasible. Apart from a description of the events that are to be examined, psychological case studies most often include a causal analysis of central problems, and sometimes also recommendations for courses of action based on the analysis.

Wilensky's 1983 study proposes a general theory of psychological case studies that helps to assess whether a case study is a psychological one, and to judge its quality as well. According to him, a psychological case study consists of a person, specified by the formula “identity + description”; a situation, characterized by “constraints + opportunities + contingencies”; and a related outcome, being “changes in person + changes in situation.”

In differentiation from life histories that consist of a series of case studies about one person, psychological case studies address only a particular pattern of behavior in a particular set of circumstances over a limited period of time.

History

Psychological case studies are of relatively recent origin and have their sources in psychiatry and social work; they have been used as a research method since the early part of the 20th century. These early psychological case studies were modeled on medical methods; that is, they often contained short clinical case vignettes or brief reports on personality description and social relationships.

After World War II, experimental and psychometric approaches became dominant and displaced case study research to clinical psychology and personality studies. Due to this development, the scientific character of case studies has never been explored thoroughly, and case studies are often neglected in textbooks except for some contributions on the specialized single-case experimental method. Therefore, there is no general agreement on the organization, content, or employment of case studies in psychology. Often they are conducted for practical purposes and their theoretical aspects are neglected. Over the past 15 years a major growth of nonexperimental case study research can be observed within ecological psychology, a branch that is studying humans' interactions with their environment.

...