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Case Studies

Case studies involve an in-depth examination of a single person or a few people.The goal of the case study is to provide an accurate and complete description ofthe case. The principal benefit of case studies is that they can expand ourknowledge about the variations in human behavior. Although experimentalresearchers are typically interested in overall trends in behavior, drawingsample-to-population inferences, and generalizing to other samples, the focus ofthe case-study approach is on individuality and describing the individual ascomprehensively as possible. The case study requires a considerable amount ofinformation, and therefore conclusions are based on a much more detailed andcomprehensive set of information than is typically collected by experimentaland quasi-experimental studies.

Case studies of individual participants often include in-depth interviews withparticipants and collaterals (e.g., friends, family members, colleagues), reviewof medical records, observation, and excerpts from participants personalwritings and diaries. Case studies have a practical function in that they can beimmediately applicable to the participants diagnosis or treatment. According to

Yin (1994), the case-study design must have the following five components: itsresearch question(s), its propositions, its unit(s) of analysis, a determination ofhow the data are linked to the propositions,and criteria to interpret the findings. According to Kazdin (1982), the majorcharacteristics of case studies are the following:

They involve the intensive study of an individual, family, group, institution, orother level that can be conceived of as a single unit. The information is highly detailed, comprehensive, and typically reported innarrative form as opposed to the quantified scores on a dependent measure. They attempt to convey the nuances of the case, including specific contexts,

extraneous influences, and special idiosyncratic details. The information they examine may be retrospective or archival.

According to Kazdin, case studies may be seen as having made at least foursubstantial contributions to science: They have served as a source of researchideas and hypotheses; they have helped to develop therapeutic techniques;they have enabled scientists to study extremely rare and low-base-ratephenomena, including rare disorders and one-time events; and they candescribe and detail instances that contradict universally accepted beliefs andassumptions, thereby serving to plant seeds of doubt and spur newexperimental research to validate or invalidate the accepted beliefs.

Case studies also have some substantial drawbacks. First, like allnonexperimental approaches, they merely describe what occurred, but theycannot tell us why it occurred. Second, they are likely to involve a great deal ofexperimenter bias (refer back to Chapter 3). Although no research design,including the randomized experimental designs, is immune to experimenterbias, some, such as the case study, are at greater risk than others. The reasonthe case study is more at risk with respect to experimenter bias is that itinvolves considerably more interaction between the researcher and theparticipant than most other research methods. In addition, the data in a case

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study come from the researchers observations of the participant. Although thismight also be supplemented by test scoresand more objective measures, it is the researcher who brings all this together inthe form of a descriptive case study of the individual(s) in question. Finally, thesmall number of individuals examined in these studies makes it unlikely that thefindings will generalize to other people with similar issues or problems. A casestudy of a single person diagnosed with a certain disorder is unlikely to berepresentative of all individuals with that disorder. Still, the overall contributionsof the case study cannot be ignored. Regardless of its nonexperimentalapproachin fact, because of its nonexperimental approachit hassubstantially informed theory, research, and practice, serving to fulfill the firstgoal of science, which is to identify issues and causes that can then beexperimentally assessed.