Should case studies be used within psychology?
A case study is an in depth analysis of a single person. The data within a case study is qualitative and therefore is not considered to be scientific. In a world where Psychology is attempting to keep the status of a science should case studies be used within the discipline?
Case studies have been highly criticised for being unscientific, by approaches such as the biological and behavioural approaches which are based around the concept of science, but these approaches can be overly scientific, it is a lot more ethical to do a case study on a person than to carry out an experiment on a person in some instances.
Case studies are a good way of getting people to take part in client centered therapies these are therapies that focus on a problem that an individual has as approaches such as the psychodynamic and the holistic approach believe that no indvidual’s problem is the same, therefore different therapies are needed for different people. Client centered therapy is where the client is given the tools to deal with what is bothering them and is more about the client eliminating the cause and not just the symptoms, unlike anti-psychotic drugs
Taking this into consideration, I think that case studies are a very useful tool and should be used within psychology even though they are not scientific because they are also good at helping psychologists to compare individuals over a long period of time, showing if treatment has had any effect whatsoever.
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Case studies are very useful and should be used in psychology all you need is one to disprove a theory or provide support for a theory. Dora (1905) did a case study on a girl who wrote a suicide note. It was discovered that at the age of 16 the husband of the wife that her dad was having an affair with appeared to come onto the 16 yr old girl. This is an example of reaction formation where the girl did not want the man because she was actually in love with him that was why she behaved badly towards him by rejecting him. This case study is enough to provide support for Freud’s theory on defence mechanisms.
Case studies are also highly important in rare cases such as brain injuries as it is obviously completely unethical to do a controlled experiment where you injure a person’s brain just to see what will happen. One of the best ways we can identify the roles of the brain or certain brain areas is by looking at rare particular cases who have damage to that specific area. For example Sachdev, Smith and Cathcart (2001) reported that head injury increased the likelihood of schizophrenia-like psychosis in 45 patients with brain damage. If these case studies hadn’t of been examined then we would not have been able to gain this knowledge.
Sachdev, P., Smith, J.S., & Cathcart, S. (2001). Schizophrenia-like psychosis following traumatic brain injury: a chart-based descriptive and case-control study. Psychological Medicine, 31, 231-239. doi: 10.1017/S0033291701003336
I agree that case studies should indeed be used and are or have been very useful in the field of psychology. There are many famous cases that opened up further research into different areas, for example Phineas Gage and how his behaviour changed, or Genie and the effect her sheltered childhood had on her development. But there is always the issue of generalisability. Because they are only on one case or one certain individual then it may be difficult to generalise the research found to all other cases or the whole population. Plus there are validity and reliability issues as it would be unethical to repeat some cases purposely, such as in the case of genie it would be largely unethical to put another child into that situation for a long time. Another large disadvantage would be like you mentioned, that they are not scientific, but they do provide critical in depth research.
References:
Case study. http://www.nvcc.edu/home/elanthier/methods/case-study.htm
Case studies are a vital part of psychological research, and it is through these that some of the largest psychological discoveries occur – Phineas Gage for example. Without record of his tragic accident, detail into the functioning of parts of the brain would have never been known to the extent that it is today. As it is completely unethical to conduct experiments which would involve discovering such information, case studies provide an insight into a world which we do not have access to. Even if there is only one recorded case of something happening, it can be enough to disprove entire theories, which would show their use. Although in some cases perhaps the case studies are not as reliable, as results cannot be replicated, it is still ridiculous to assume that they are not scientific, as in some cases they most definitely are. Clive wearing (a sufferer from extreme amnesia) is a case study with highly physiological symptoms. The illness is rare, and he suffered loss of almost all his short term memory, and most of his long term (Campbell and Conway 1995). Cases like this help understand the neurology of the brain, and its functions, through brain scanning, MRI and so on, showing that using case studies are in fact worthwhile.
Campbell, R. Conway, M, A., (1995) Broken Memories: case studies in memory impairment, Blackwell publishers, 14-29
Case studies are very benifical towards research within psychology, and assist in developing research when there is only limited resources available. However by using case studies we give a lot of space for speculation and bias within qualitative data. As mentioned previously, a suicidal case study could be used to support Freuds theory of defence mechanisms, if the case study was funded by a neuropsychologist could the conclusions of the research have been different? It would be very difficult to have case studies that are not seen to be bias whether because of funding or the researchers personal preference. For this reason the qualitative data can not be seen to be as scientific as quantitative data, as it is dependant upon person discretion.