case studies

Question 1

what is a case study?

Answer 1

an in-depth investigation, description and analysis of a single individual, group, institution or event
case history of individual produced with interviews, observations, questionnaires
(usually qualitative data, longitudinal)

Question 2

strengths

Answer 2

• detailed insights on very unusual forms of behaviour (less superficial than experiment/questionnaire data)
• may contribute to understanding of ‘typical’ functioning (e.g. HM, separate stores in STM and LTM)
• can generate hypotheses for future study

Question 3

limitations

Answer 3

• generalisation of findings (small sample)
• subjective data selection/interpretation from researcher
• retrospective observation may mean inaccuracy/memory decay. evidence may have low validity