Case studies and content analysis

Question 1

What are case studies?

Answer 1

• Case studies involve the analysis of unusual individuals or events
• they are in depth investigations, descriptions and analysis of a single individual, group, institution or event

Question 2

How are case studies conducted?

Answer 2

• case studies are conducted through the product of qualitative data. This can be done through interviews,observations, questionaires of all of these
• they are occur over a long period of time and may involve the gathering information from family and friends of an individual

Question 3

What are the strengths of case studies?

Answer 3

• they are detailed, rich insights which may shed light on unusual and atypical behaviours
• they may be preferred over superficial data
• case studies also generate hypothnesis for future cases
• case studies allow us to infer things about normal behaviour of humans

Question 4

What are weaknesses of case studies?

Answer 4

• Case studies are not generalisable to dealing with wider populations
• information case studies are based on are subjective as they are selected by the researcher
• information from friends and family may be inaccurate
• They are time consuming and difficult to replicate

Question 5

What is content analysis?

Answer 5

• They are a type of observational research where an individual is studied indirectly via communication that they have produced
• these communications can be spoken interactions, written forms, TV, books and magazines
• The aims are to summarise these communications in a systematic way so overall communications can be drawn

Question 6

What are the stages of content analysis?

Answer 6

1. coding
2. thematic analysis

Question 7

What is the first stage of content analysis?

Answer 7

• the initial step of content analysis where communication is analysed by identifying each piece of information into meaningful units
• This can be done through creating a coding system like how many times a word appears
• this is quantitative

Question 8

What is the second stage of content analysis?

Answer 8

• the qualitative process which involves identifying ideas that are reaccuring in the coding system. Once the researcher has established themes, they can collect new data to test the validity of the themes
• then,they can make the final report

Question 9

What is the strength of thematic analysis?

Answer 9

• it reduces ethical issues as the communications are public domain and is public and accessible
• easy replication
• provides a large set of quantitative data and qualitative data
• Strong external validity as the data is in the real world and therefore is generalisable

Question 10

What is the limitation of thematic analysis?

Answer 10

• there is observer bias, so there may be a danger of information being taken out of context
• the researcher may have a biased opinion