Case Study Guidelines

Research Design:
In general, case studies are in-depth studies of one or a few individuals, & can be very
valuable when investigating a phenomenon that is relatively rare, or when we want to do an in-depth
history on a person. Of course, any case study you would carry out for your lab assignment can't be
as extensive or in-depth as a formal research study.

Data collection:
Gather information about your participant from as many sources as are available to you. You
could interview your participant, and/or his or her family or friends. Include your own observations, the
participant's self-report of their experience. You may even be able to include the results of
psychological testing on the participant if available. For example, in a case study of someone who has
had a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), you could interview the participant &/or their family, & add
your own observations, & the results of any cognitive testing that the participant knows about. There
are also some online tests of psychological disorders & personality traits that might be of interest in
your case study. Do note these on-line mini-tests have dubious validity, however.

Data Analysis:
Summarize the results of your interviews & observations into a description of the participant.
For the Results section of your lab report, this would be about a 2-4 page summary. The focus of your
summary depends on the topic question (eg in a case study of MTBI, you would focus on the effects
of the head injury). However, you should generally include subsections presenting:
• Participant's History & family of origin. Begin with gender & current age, & include significant
childhood experiences, especially regarding the topic of interest, & significant adult
experiences & events.
• Current functioning: include occupation, education, marital & family status. Depending on your
topic question, the following subsections should also be included:
• Relevant medical or psychological diagnosis (if applicable): include here psychological,
emotional, cognitive & behavioural symptoms or indicators regarding your topic of interest (eg.
MTBI, or psychological disorder).
• Treatment: (if applicable). This would include medical & psychological treatment, & any other
relevant therapies. Note whether these have been successful.
As well as obtaining your participant's consent to do this case study, do make sure that you protect
the participant's confidentiality in presenting the case. It is not enough to substitute their name with a
pseudonym. Also avoid overly specific details & descriptors of occupation, etc. that might compromise
your participant's anonymity. (For example, "J.W., a college instructor in Psychology who is a
therapist & a writer...").

Presentation of your results in a Research Report:

The standard APA style lab report can be used to present your case study. In the Introduction,
briefly review past research & theory in your topic question (e.g. summarize current research on
MBTI). Use APA referencing style to cite your sources. In the Method section, under Participants,
present a general description of the participant (age, diagnosis, etc.). In the Materials section,
describe any materials you may have used (e.g. on-line personality test), & in the Procedure section,
note that your general research strategy was a case study, & describe your methods of data collection
(e.g. interview, etc.).
In the Results section of the report, present your 2-4 page summary of the case study.
Generally, avoid excessive interpretation of the case in the Results section. Simply present the
person, their symptoms, diagnosis & treatment (if applicable). No citations would occur here, since
you are describing your results.
Finally, in the Discussion section, interpret your participant's case from the perspective of
current research &/or theory, including theory & research discussed in your Introduction, & other
research or theory you may have found that would help you understand your case study. (For
example, for a case study of MTBI, relate your participant's experience & symptoms to the research
you presented in the Introduction. Is your case typical of a mild brain injury or not?)
Use APA referencing style to cite your sources. Do finish the Discussion section with a note on the
limitations of your study in terms of generalizability. Because of the small sample used in a case study
method, however illustrative it may be, you must be careful to avoid generalizing your results to other
cases.

Survey Guidelines
Conducting a Survey

Planning the Survey:

Choose a topic for your survey. Before you begin drafting your questions, read about the topic
(e.g. the chapter in your text). Check your text web site for some suggestions for topics & questions.
The first thing you must do is to determine the research question - what is it you wish to know? Keep
your topic in mind & make sure all your questions are relevant to it.

Guidelines for Drafting the Survey: Some guidelines for drafting the questions on your survey:
• Start with a brief introduction: Briefly introduce your topic & who you are, but avoid overly
directing your subjects' answers. You may then ask demographic questions (gender, age,
etc.). Either at the beginning or end (or both), make sure you include a thank you to the
participant for their time!
• Your questions should be clear, understandable, & inoffensive: Make sure your questions are
clear, that they ask what you mean them to ask, & are unlikely to be misunderstood. Also,
ensure that they are unbiased, inoffensive in their language, & easily understandable by your
participants (not too technical, difficult, or unfamiliar).
• Don't be too obvious: Carefully word your questions to be as innocuous and unthreatening as
possible, & try not to "lead" your subjects to the answers you are looking for. This is
particularly important when your topic is a sensitive one, which subjects may find
embarrassing, or one which they are likely to be dishonest about.
• Check the order of your questions: In general, it's a good idea to ask the most important &
interesting questions early in the survey (before the subject gets too bored or impatient with
the questionnaire). However, you may need to gradually lead up to your most important
question, so do use your judgement.
• Keep the survey short: Maximum 2 pages, in most cases.
• Choose the best response alternatives: There are numerous response alternatives you can
use; use the one that seems most appropriate for your questions. For example, to the
question: "You and your parents argue " Response sets could be closed, which is easier
to score. For example you could give:
a) a list of possible answers to the question (e.g. several times daily, daily, several times
a week, weekly, etc.). Or
b) frequency rates: (e.g. all the time, a lot, often, frequently, sometimes, seldom, etc.). Or
c) frequency scores on an interval scale: (draw a scale of 1 to 5 (or 7), 1 being "rarely",
and 7 being "most of the time"). Or questions could be open ended (leave an empty
line for the subject to fill in themselves). Each method of responding has its advantages
& limitations.

Construction of the survey: Make sure your survey is typed, has no embarrassing spelling or
grammatical errors, & is laid out in a way that is clear & easy to read.
• Pretest your survey: After you've constructed a draft of the questionnaire, pretest the survey
with a willing "confederate", & ask for his/her feedback about their understanding of the
 questions, response alternatives, etc. Ask them to "think aloud" while answering the questions,
& ask them how they interpreted each question & the list of possible answers.

Conducting the Survey:

• Sample size: Generally survey a minimum of 30 subjects. You will need more if you want to do
a comparison of genders, ages, etc. (e.g. 20-30 males & 20-30 females).
• Sample source: It's crucial to be as unbiased as possible in your sample source. However, in
some cases (e.g. when you need permission from a parent or guardian to do any research
study with minors) an unbiased random sample will likely be impossible to find. In that case,
do note in your research report that your sample was biased, & your findings may not reflect
the opinions of the average member of that population.

During your survey:

Try not to subtly bias the respondent's answers by inadvertently showing approval or
disapproval of certain answers, or by hinting in any way at the answer you are expecting. If you
survey your subjects individually or in several small groups, make sure you introduce & explain the
survey the same way each time you give it out.

Analyzing the Survey:

Once you have your completed surveys, you will have to make some sense of your data, &
present your results in the Results section of your report. Depending on your response alternatives,
you could total the answers & present the totals for each answer as a frequency or a percentage in a
table form, or code & compile the open-ended answers. If you have interval scales (a scale from 1 to
7, for example), you can compute means & standard deviations (easy using Excel), & present these in
a numerical form & in a graph or table. You may even be able to do correlations between pairs of
numerical variables (with Excel).

Presenting & Discussing your Survey:

The standard APA style lab report can be used to present your survey. In the Introduction,
briefly review past research & theory in your topic question (e.g. briefly summarize current research
on stress). Use APA referencing style to cite your sources. In the Method section, under
Participants, present a general description of the participants (Mean age, gender, sample source, etc).
In the Materials section, describe your survey. Include a copy of the actual survey in an Appendix of
the report, & refer the reader to the Appendix in the Materials section. In theProcedure section, note
your general research strategy was a survey, & describe your methods of data collection (e.g. in
person vs telephone or on-line survey, etc.).
In the Results section of the report, present your Results as noted above. Use a table if
possible, & add a verbal description of your results. Generally, avoid interpretation of your findings
case in the Results section. Simply present the findings here; discussion of them occurs in the
Discussion section.
Finally, in the Discussion section, you should integrate your findings to theory & past research
findings in your topic. Relate your survey findings to what you have learned from the text or other
sources about that topic. For example, you could compare your participants' reports about the causes
& effects of stress to what research in the text found. If your findings contradict current research or
theory, or if you observed something unusual or unexpected, you could suggest reasons why your
observations may differ from the expected findings.

@Janet Waters
Source: https://www.capilanou.ca/programs-courses/psychology/student- resources/research-
guidelines/Survey-Guidelines/
 Correlational Research Guidelines
Conducting Correlational Research

Research Design
In general, a correlational study is a quantitative method of research in which you have 2 or
more quantitative variables from the same group of subjects, & you are trying to determine if there is a
relationship (or covariation) between the 2 variables (a similarity between them, not a difference
between their means). Theoretically, any 2 quantitative variables can be correlated (for example,
midterm scores & number of body piercings!) as long as you have scores on these variables from the
same participants; however, it is probably a waste of time to collect & analyze data when there is little
reason to think these two variables would be related to each other.
Try to have 30 or more participants; this is important to increase the validity of the research.
Your hypothesis might be that there is a positive correlation (for example, the number of hours of
study & your midterm exam scores), or a negative correlation (for example, your levels of stress &
your exam scores). A perfect correlation would be an r = +1.0 & -1.0, while no correlation would be r
= 0. Perfect correlations would almost never occur; expect to see correlations much less than + or -
1.0. Although correlation can't prove a causal relationship, it can be used for prediction, to support a
theory, to measure test-retest reliability, etc.

Data collection:
You may collect your data through testing (e.g. scores on a knowledge test (an exam or math
test, etc.), or psychological tests, numerical responses on surveys & questionnaires, etc. Even
archival data can be used (e.g. Kindergarten grades) as long as it is in a numerical form.

Data Analysis:
With the use of the Excel program, calculating correlations is probably the easiest data to
analyze. In Excel, set up three columns: Subject #, Variable 1 (e.g. hours of study), & Variable 2 (e.g.
exam scores). Then enter your data in these columns. Select a cell for the correlation to appear in &
label it. Click "fx" on the toolbar at the top, then "statistical", then "Pearson". When asked, highlight in
turn each of the two columns of data, click "Finish", & your correlation will appear. Charts in any
statistics textbook can tell you if the correlation is significant, considering the number of participants.
You can also do graphs & scatter plots with Excel, if you would like to depict your data that way (See
Chart wizard).

Presentation of your results in a Research Report:

Use the standard APA style lab report. In the Introduction, briefly review past research &
theory in your topic question (e.g. summarize current research on stress & academic achievement).
Use APA referencing style to cite your sources. Then in the Method section, present a general
description of the group of participants (their number, mean age, gender, etc.) in the
Participants section, any materials you may have used (e.g. tests, surveys, etc.) in the Materials
section, & in the Procedure section, note that your general research strategy was a correlational
study, & describe your methods of data collection (e.g. survey, test, etc.).
In the Results section of the report, present your correlation statistic in both a table & in words,
& note whether or not it is significant. If you have more than 2 variables to correlate, present a
correlational matrix, showing the correlation between each of the variables. In the following example,
4 variables were correlated in one study. The correlation between Exam scores & hours of study, for
example, is r = +.67, p <.01. This indicates a significant positive relationship between the number of
hours of study & subsequent exam scores.
 Number of hours of study & subsequent exam scores
Hours of study +.67*

Stress level - .45*

# of Piercings -.15

Exam Scores

* p < .01

In the Discussion section, relate your results to past or current research & theory you had cited
& described in the Introduction. Do note the statistical significance of your findings, & limits to their
generalizability. Remember that even if you did not obtain the significant differences you had hoped
to, your results are still interesting, & must be explained, with reference to other research & theory.

© Janet Waters
https://www.capilanou.ca/programs-courses/psychology/student- resources/research-guidelines/Correlational-
Research- Guidelines/#sthash.8uXTNmH7.dpuf