1. Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
Spaced Retrieval
Immediate activity: Look at the strengths and limitations listed below and decide if they refer to Case study or content analysis? Are there any that could apply to both?
Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
Provides insight for further research.
Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.
Can’t generalize the results to the wider population.
Researchers' own subjective feeling may influence the write up (researcher bias).
Difficult to replicate.
Time consuming.

2. What are case studies and content analysis and when are they used in psychology ?
What case studies are.
What content analysis is and how to conduct one
The strengths and limitations of case studies and content analysis
Practical skills of conducting a case study, identifying themes and analysing results

3. Add this to your case study grid and feel smug
Case study example
We also looked at case studies yesterday so using your grid have a go at answering the following stem questions.
Clever word alert!
Because case studies aim to explain the behaviour of an individual or small group they take an ideographic approach to the study of human behaviour as opposed to nomothetic approach which looks at developing general principles and laws that can be applied to all.
Add this to your case study grid and feel smug

4. Reviewing our ideas Features, strengths and weaknesses and limitation

5. Content analysis
Researchers were interested in children’s use of social networking sites, such as ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’. They asked children to write an essay about their use of social networking. In their essays, the children were asked to consider how often they used social networking sites, who they communicated with and the main topics discussed. There were 80 participants in the study: twenty children aged 13 –14 years from each of four different schools in the Birmingham area. There were equal numbers of boys and girls. Before the study began, the researchers devised a set of categories to be used to analyse the children’s essays. These included the following categories: number of social networking friends; daily use of sites; topics discussed.
Briefly explain why this study is an example of content analysis. (2 marks)
Explain how the psychologists might have carried out content analysis to analyse the essay about their use of social networking. (4 marks)

6. Over to you most over used phrases in personal statements
Working in pairs read though the personal statements and work through the questions to conduct your own content analysis of the statements

7. A quick quiz to finish us off