How to write a powerful psychology case study?

By Published Writing Guides

You may be expected to write a case study at a particular stage in your field of psychology. Many are used in clinical cases or in circumstances in which it is not logistically possible to conduct laboratory research. It often depends on real events and envisioned persons or personalities from a tv series, movie, or novel during undergraduate courses.

The particular tool for a case study can vary considerably. In certain situations, your case study will concentrate purely on the person of concern. Quoting relevant research and backstory information on a specific topic are other requirements. For a good description of your task, always discuss with your trainer.

What is a case study?

A case study in psychology focuses on one person in most situations. There are also occasions, however, where several cases may be expected to be included. It is very popular in undergraduate years to rely on a personality from a novel or a movie for case study research.

It is essential to uncover some trends and possible reasons why they show values, rituals and other factors that deviate from acceptable behavior by observing and addressing all aspects of the life, action, thought processes, and past.

One of the significant benefits of a case study is that it helps researchers explore otherwise hard or impossible stuff to accomplish in a laboratory. For instance, Genie’s case study enabled scientists to examine that language could be learned even after missing crucial periods for language learning.

When to analyze psychology case study?

When you wish to develop specific, analytical, in-depth information about a particular real-world subject, a case study is an acceptable research methodology. It encourages you to examine the core aspects, interpretations, and consequences of the situation.

In a thesis statement or dissertation, case studies are always a successful decision. When you may not have the time or money to conduct large-scale studies, they hold your project concentrated and achievable.

To evaluate and highlight various facets of your research dilemma, you may use either one specific case study where you examine a single topic in detail or perform several case studies.

What are the methods of the psychology case study?

In-depth inquiries into a particular person, organization, incident or society are case studies. Data is typically obtained from several sources often through many different techniques (e.g. observations & interviews).
The case study analysis process emerged in clinical practice (the case’s history, i.e. the patient’s account). In psychology, case studies are mostly limited to the study of a single person. The data is mainly biographical and refers to events in a person’s history and relevant events happening in their daily lives.

Several approaches, including prospective and retrospective case study methods, could perform a case study.

Prospective case study

Prospective case study writing requires the client’s adherence or a collection of persons. A prospective case study may be tracking a group of individuals with a different illness over a given period (this could be weeks, months or even years). It would be easier to see how the condition develops by examining and recording the improvements and the variations between people. Are there any variations created by ageing, gender, social status, education, etc.?

Prospective case study approaches are those in which, a person or group of individuals is studied to evaluate findings. For instance, to track a particular illness’s progression, a group of people may be observed over a long period.

Retrospective case study

Your research involves looking at recorded events, in other terms, the background knowledge available, in the case of a retrospective case analysis. An example that we consider is a specific disorder. The consequence is this condition, so you will then make adjustments, defining some relevant variables that might (or might not) have led to why these individuals first and foremost acquired the issue. You might use genetic factors to see whether you could define any possible causes in the parents or ancestors that may have caused them to be born with that specific illness if a person were born with a disease.

Sources of information used

There are various references and techniques that researchers can use to collect knowledge about a person or community. The six key factors that researchers have identified are:

Archival records. Examples of archival documents are census data, survey data, and identity lists.
Direct observation. This method includes, often in a natural environment, examining the subject. While an independent observer is often used, using a community of observers is much more usual.
Documents. The types of papers sometimes used as references are emails, news stories, organizational reports, etc.
Interviews. One of the essential techniques for collecting evidence in research papers is interviewing. Structured sample-style questions or more unstructured interviews may be used in an interview.
Participant observation. Participant observation is considered if the observer acts as an observer in activities and monitors the behavior and effects.
Physical artefacts. Through careful measurements of the topic, methods, items, equipment, and other items are also noticed.

Section 1: A case history

It will have the following structure and content in this section:

Background information. The first segment of your paper will introduce the history of your customer. It includes the characteristics such as lifestyle, ethnicity, career, medical history, personal diagnosed mental problems, friends and personal interactions, history of alcohol and drugs, life challenges, aspirations, and coping strategies and limitations.
Description of presenting problem. You will describe the problem or signs the client has identified in the next part of your case report. Define any client-reported physical, mental, or perceptual effects. Symptom-related thinking, emotions, and experiences must also be remembered. All testing or medical evaluations that are used must also be comprehensive, and all scores reported in full.
Tour diagnosis. Just provide assessment and provide the correct code for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Explain how you made your conclusion, how the signs of the customer match the disease(s) medical criterion, or any potential challenges in making a diagnosis.

Section 2: The intervention

The second portion of your report will reflect on the method required to support the customer. Your teacher may ask you to choose between a specific theoretical solution or to ask you to outline two or three alternative alternatives to care.

Cognitive-behavioral approach. Understand how a behavioral counsellor can approach therapy. Give cognitive-behavioral therapy history details and explain the recovery sessions, client reaction, and treatment method. Take note of any obstacles or successes faced during recovery by your customer.
Humanistic approach. Define a humanistic approach, such as person-centred treatment that may be used to help the client. Provide details about the type of medication you have selected, the client’s responsiveness to the procedure, and the end outcome of this technique. Explain whether the process has been successful or failed.
Psychoanalytic approach. Define how a psychoanalytic therapist can see the client’s concern. Provide information on the approach of psychoanalytic and cite essential sources. Understand how the client will be handled with psychoanalytic therapy, how the client will react to treatment, and the feasibility of this approach to treatment.

Additional case study tips:

While preparing your study, here are a few extra tips to bear in mind:
Never relate to “the user.” as the topic of the case report. Use his or her name or a nickname instead.
To get an understanding of the design and format, read samples of research papers.
While referencing sources, recall using the APA file.

Steps to writing a psychology case study

Step 1. Choose a Scenario. You must be willing to take the particular case you’d like to work on after establishing your issue statement and analysis questions.

Step 2. Develop a theoretical structure. Although case studies concentrate more on precise specifics than general theories, they should generally have some field theory relation. The case study is not merely an independent explanation but is incorporated into the current understanding of the subject in this way.

Step 3. Gather the details. To gather data on your subject, there are several different analysis methods you can use. Using approaches such as interviews, impressions, and analysis of secondary sources of information, case studies aim to rely on qualitative evidence.

Step 4. Describe the situation and evaluate it. It would help if you pulled together all the related factors in writing the case study to include as full a description of the subject as possible.

Step 5. Grammar and spelling check.

However, make sure to include qualitative information about the situation, trace it back to literature and philosophy, and address how it falls into more extensive traditions or debates.

What are the strengths of the psychology case study?

It offers robust data.
It offers a perspective for further analysis.
Allowing otherwise unrealistic (or unethical) conditions to be examined.

Case studies encourage a researcher to study a subject in far more depth than would be possible if they had to work with a vast number of participants in the analysis to ‘average.’

Case studies also spotlight facets of human thought and conduct that may be immoral or impossible to research in some areas because of their in-depth, multi-sided method.

Writing case studies is an incredibly legitimate method, but it has its drawbacks. Many of the significant benefits are that they are used very much for new land discovery. Since a case study looks more in-depth at how different aspects coexist to produce a result, clinicians may systematically formulate new therapeutic ideas. Those who practice systematic approaches to therapeutic situations they are accommodating.

What are the limitations of the psychology case study?

Lacking methodological rigour and presenting the larger public with no ground for generalization of findings.
The psychological state of researchers can affect the case study.
Hard to reproduce.
Time-consuming and costly!
The amount of data and the time limits affected the research depth that was achievable given the resources available.

Since only one person/event/group is involved in a case study, we can never be guaranteed whether the case study studied indicates the larger body of “similar” instances. It suggests that the results taken from a single situation might not be transferable to other environments.

Types of psychology case study:

There are a few different kinds of case studies that psychologists and other scientists can use:

Exploratory. The counterpart to a systematic, large-scale research project is typically an explorative case study. The case study aims to show that any further research is required. The investigator could create a study for an exploratory process if such war experiences are more likely to cause PTSD. Once this is shown, to determine which incidents will most likely trigger PTSD, a large-scale research experiment should be carried out.

In psychology and the social sciences, exploratory research papers are very common. Psychologists are always searching for different ways of treating their patients, and laboratory experiments allow them to test new ideas or theories.

Collective. To develop the case for a new thesis, several case studies or collaborative studies use various tasks. Without investing more time and money in new research, previous studies allow for more excellent knowledge. This method of analysis may also reveal variations. A researcher may found, for example, that veterans fighting in the Middle East are more likely to experience a particular form of illness. Or, possibly, veterans who served with large platoons were much more likely than veterans with smaller platoons to recover from PTSD.

Instrumental. To provide information into a process, an instrumental case analysis uses a case. For example, middle school children and an exercise may be set up by an investigator interested in child rates of obesity. The children and the fitness routine are not the priority in this situation. The emphasis is on understanding the correlation and exercise between kids, and when some kids become overweight.

Descriptive. These include beginning with a descriptive theory. Then the subjects are observed, and the data obtained is compared to the before the hypothesis.

Final thoughts

Research papers can be a valuable method for analysis, but they must be used carefully. In specific ways, they are better used in circumstances where it would have been difficult or impractical to experiment. They can be useful in looking at particular cases that encourage researchers to obtain a significant amount of information about a single person or group of people. Need professional help with your case study? Get it from the best writing services.

If you’ve been guided to write a sociology class study, make sure to review the precise instructions you are supposed to meet with your mentor.