16^th European Diabetes and Endocrinology Congress

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a single person, group, event or community. Typically, data are gathered from a variety of sources and by using several different methods The research may also continue for an extended period of time, so processes and developments can be studied as they happen. The case study method often involves simply observing what happens to, or reconstructing ‘the case history’ of a single participant or group of individuals, i.e the idiographic approach. Case studies allow a researcher to investigate a topic in far more detail than might be possible if they were trying to deal with a large number of research participants with the aim of ‘averaging’. The case study is not itself a research method, but researchers select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate material suitable for case studies. Amongst the sources of data the psychologist is likely to turn to when carrying out a case study are observations of a person’s daily routine, unstructured interviews with the participant herself, diaries, personal notes or official document Most of this information is likely to be qualitative but the psychologist might collect numerical data as well.