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What Is a Case Study?

Weighing the pros and cons of this method of research

Verywell / Colleen Tighe

• Pros and Cons

What Types of Case Studies Are Out There?

Where do you find data for a case study, how do i write a psychology case study.

A case study is an in-depth study of one person, group, or event. In a case study, nearly every aspect of the subject's life and history is analyzed to seek patterns and causes of behavior. Case studies can be used in many different fields, including psychology, medicine, education, anthropology, political science, and social work.

The point of a case study is to learn as much as possible about an individual or group so that the information can be generalized to many others. Unfortunately, case studies tend to be highly subjective, and it is sometimes difficult to generalize results to a larger population.

While case studies focus on a single individual or group, they follow a format similar to other types of psychology writing. If you are writing a case study, we got you—here are some rules of APA format to reference.  

At a Glance

A case study, or an in-depth study of a person, group, or event, can be a useful research tool when used wisely. In many cases, case studies are best used in situations where it would be difficult or impossible for you to conduct an experiment. They are helpful for looking at unique situations and allow researchers to gather a lot of˜ information about a specific individual or group of people. However, it's important to be cautious of any bias we draw from them as they are highly subjective.

What Are the Benefits and Limitations of Case Studies?

A case study can have its strengths and weaknesses. Researchers must consider these pros and cons before deciding if this type of study is appropriate for their needs.

One of the greatest advantages of a case study is that it allows researchers to investigate things that are often difficult or impossible to replicate in a lab. Some other benefits of a case study:

• Allows researchers to capture information on the 'how,' 'what,' and 'why,' of something that's implemented
• Gives researchers the chance to collect information on why one strategy might be chosen over another
• Permits researchers to develop hypotheses that can be explored in experimental research

On the other hand, a case study can have some drawbacks:

• It cannot necessarily be generalized to the larger population
• Cannot demonstrate cause and effect
• It may not be scientifically rigorous
• It can lead to bias

Researchers may choose to perform a case study if they want to explore a unique or recently discovered phenomenon. Through their insights, researchers develop additional ideas and study questions that might be explored in future studies.

It's important to remember that the insights from case studies cannot be used to determine cause-and-effect relationships between variables. However, case studies may be used to develop hypotheses that can then be addressed in experimental research.

Case Study Examples

There have been a number of notable case studies in the history of psychology. Much of  Freud's work and theories were developed through individual case studies. Some great examples of case studies in psychology include:

• Anna O : Anna O. was a pseudonym of a woman named Bertha Pappenheim, a patient of a physician named Josef Breuer. While she was never a patient of Freud's, Freud and Breuer discussed her case extensively. The woman was experiencing symptoms of a condition that was then known as hysteria and found that talking about her problems helped relieve her symptoms. Her case played an important part in the development of talk therapy as an approach to mental health treatment.
• Phineas Gage : Phineas Gage was a railroad employee who experienced a terrible accident in which an explosion sent a metal rod through his skull, damaging important portions of his brain. Gage recovered from his accident but was left with serious changes in both personality and behavior.
• Genie : Genie was a young girl subjected to horrific abuse and isolation. The case study of Genie allowed researchers to study whether language learning was possible, even after missing critical periods for language development. Her case also served as an example of how scientific research may interfere with treatment and lead to further abuse of vulnerable individuals.

Such cases demonstrate how case research can be used to study things that researchers could not replicate in experimental settings. In Genie's case, her horrific abuse denied her the opportunity to learn a language at critical points in her development.

This is clearly not something researchers could ethically replicate, but conducting a case study on Genie allowed researchers to study phenomena that are otherwise impossible to reproduce.

There are a few different types of case studies that psychologists and other researchers might use:

• Collective case studies : These involve studying a group of individuals. Researchers might study a group of people in a certain setting or look at an entire community. For example, psychologists might explore how access to resources in a community has affected the collective mental well-being of those who live there.
• Descriptive case studies : These involve starting with a descriptive theory. The subjects are then observed, and the information gathered is compared to the pre-existing theory.
• Explanatory case studies : These   are often used to do causal investigations. In other words, researchers are interested in looking at factors that may have caused certain things to occur.
• Exploratory case studies : These are sometimes used as a prelude to further, more in-depth research. This allows researchers to gather more information before developing their research questions and hypotheses .
• Instrumental case studies : These occur when the individual or group allows researchers to understand more than what is initially obvious to observers.
• Intrinsic case studies : This type of case study is when the researcher has a personal interest in the case. Jean Piaget's observations of his own children are good examples of how an intrinsic case study can contribute to the development of a psychological theory.

The three main case study types often used are intrinsic, instrumental, and collective. Intrinsic case studies are useful for learning about unique cases. Instrumental case studies help look at an individual to learn more about a broader issue. A collective case study can be useful for looking at several cases simultaneously.

The type of case study that psychology researchers use depends on the unique characteristics of the situation and the case itself.

There are a number of different sources and methods that researchers can use to gather information about an individual or group. Six major sources that have been identified by researchers are:

• Archival records : Census records, survey records, and name lists are examples of archival records.
• Direct observation : This strategy involves observing the subject, often in a natural setting . While an individual observer is sometimes used, it is more common to utilize a group of observers.
• Documents : Letters, newspaper articles, administrative records, etc., are the types of documents often used as sources.
• Interviews : Interviews are one of the most important methods for gathering information in case studies. An interview can involve structured survey questions or more open-ended questions.
• Participant observation : When the researcher serves as a participant in events and observes the actions and outcomes, it is called participant observation.
• Physical artifacts : Tools, objects, instruments, and other artifacts are often observed during a direct observation of the subject.

If you have been directed to write a case study for a psychology course, be sure to check with your instructor for any specific guidelines you need to follow. If you are writing your case study for a professional publication, check with the publisher for their specific guidelines for submitting a case study.

Here is a general outline of what should be included in a case study.

Section 1: A Case History

This section will have the following structure and content:

Background information : The first section of your paper will present your client's background. Include factors such as age, gender, work, health status, family mental health history, family and social relationships, drug and alcohol history, life difficulties, goals, and coping skills and weaknesses.

Description of the presenting problem : In the next section of your case study, you will describe the problem or symptoms that the client presented with.

Describe any physical, emotional, or sensory symptoms reported by the client. Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions related to the symptoms should also be noted. Any screening or diagnostic assessments that are used should also be described in detail and all scores reported.

Your diagnosis : Provide your diagnosis and give the appropriate Diagnostic and Statistical Manual code. Explain how you reached your diagnosis, how the client's symptoms fit the diagnostic criteria for the disorder(s), or any possible difficulties in reaching a diagnosis.

Section 2: Treatment Plan

This portion of the paper will address the chosen treatment for the condition. This might also include the theoretical basis for the chosen treatment or any other evidence that might exist to support why this approach was chosen.

• Cognitive behavioral approach : Explain how a cognitive behavioral therapist would approach treatment. Offer background information on cognitive behavioral therapy and describe the treatment sessions, client response, and outcome of this type of treatment. Make note of any difficulties or successes encountered by your client during treatment.
• Humanistic approach : Describe a humanistic approach that could be used to treat your client, such as client-centered therapy . Provide information on the type of treatment you chose, the client's reaction to the treatment, and the end result of this approach. Explain why the treatment was successful or unsuccessful.
• Psychoanalytic approach : Describe how a psychoanalytic therapist would view the client's problem. Provide some background on the psychoanalytic approach and cite relevant references. Explain how psychoanalytic therapy would be used to treat the client, how the client would respond to therapy, and the effectiveness of this treatment approach.
• Pharmacological approach : If treatment primarily involves the use of medications, explain which medications were used and why. Provide background on the effectiveness of these medications and how monotherapy may compare with an approach that combines medications with therapy or other treatments.

This section of a case study should also include information about the treatment goals, process, and outcomes.

When you are writing a case study, you should also include a section where you discuss the case study itself, including the strengths and limitiations of the study. You should note how the findings of your case study might support previous research. 

In your discussion section, you should also describe some of the implications of your case study. What ideas or findings might require further exploration? How might researchers go about exploring some of these questions in additional studies?

Need More Tips?

Here are a few additional pointers to keep in mind when formatting your case study:

• Never refer to the subject of your case study as "the client." Instead, use their name or a pseudonym.
• Read examples of case studies to gain an idea about the style and format.
• Remember to use APA format when citing references .

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach .  BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011;11:100.

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach . BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011 Jun 27;11:100. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-11-100

Gagnon, Yves-Chantal.  The Case Study as Research Method: A Practical Handbook . Canada, Chicago Review Press Incorporated DBA Independent Pub Group, 2010.

Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods . United States, SAGE Publications, 2017.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Psychology Case Study Examples: A Deep Dive into Real-life Scenarios

Peeling back the layers of the human mind is no easy task, but psychology case studies can help us do just that. Through these detailed analyses, we’re able to gain a deeper understanding of human behavior, emotions, and cognitive processes. I’ve always found it fascinating how a single person’s experience can shed light on broader psychological principles.

Over the years, psychologists have conducted numerous case studies—each with their own unique insights and implications. These investigations range from Phineas Gage’s accidental lobotomy to Genie Wiley’s tragic tale of isolation. Such examples not only enlighten us about specific disorders or occurrences but also continue to shape our overall understanding of psychology .

As we delve into some noteworthy examples , I assure you’ll appreciate how varied and intricate the field of psychology truly is. Whether you’re a budding psychologist or simply an eager learner, brace yourself for an intriguing exploration into the intricacies of the human psyche.

Understanding Psychology Case Studies

Diving headfirst into the world of psychology, it’s easy to come upon a valuable tool used by psychologists and researchers alike – case studies. I’m here to shed some light on these fascinating tools.

Psychology case studies, for those unfamiliar with them, are in-depth investigations carried out to gain a profound understanding of the subject – whether it’s an individual, group or phenomenon. They’re powerful because they provide detailed insights that other research methods might miss.

Let me share a few examples to clarify this concept further:

• One notable example is Freud’s study on Little Hans. This case study explored a 5-year-old boy’s fear of horses and related it back to Freud’s theories about psychosexual stages.
• Another classic example is Genie Wiley (a pseudonym), a feral child who was subjected to severe social isolation during her early years. Her heartbreaking story provided invaluable insights into language acquisition and critical periods in development.

You see, what sets psychology case studies apart is their focus on the ‘why’ and ‘how’. While surveys or experiments might tell us ‘what’, they often don’t dig deep enough into the inner workings behind human behavior.

It’s important though not to take these psychology case studies at face value. As enlightening as they can be, we must remember that they usually focus on one specific instance or individual. Thus, generalizing findings from single-case studies should be done cautiously.

To illustrate my point using numbers: let’s say we have 1 million people suffering from condition X worldwide; if only 20 unique cases have been studied so far (which would be quite typical for rare conditions), then our understanding is based on just 0.002% of the total cases! That’s why multiple sources and types of research are vital when trying to understand complex psychological phenomena fully.

In the grand scheme of things, psychology case studies are just one piece of the puzzle – albeit an essential one. They provide rich, detailed data that can form the foundation for further research and understanding. As we delve deeper into this fascinating field, it’s crucial to appreciate all the tools at our disposal – from surveys and experiments to these insightful case studies.

Importance of Case Studies in Psychology

I’ve always been fascinated by the human mind, and if you’re here, I bet you are too. Let’s dive right into why case studies play such a pivotal role in psychology.

One of the key reasons they matter so much is because they provide detailed insights into specific psychological phenomena. Unlike other research methods that might use large samples but only offer surface-level findings, case studies allow us to study complex behaviors, disorders, and even treatments at an intimate level. They often serve as a catalyst for new theories or help refine existing ones.

To illustrate this point, let’s look at one of psychology’s most famous case studies – Phineas Gage. He was a railroad construction foreman who survived a severe brain injury when an iron rod shot through his skull during an explosion in 1848. The dramatic personality changes he experienced after his accident led to significant advancements in our understanding of the brain’s role in personality and behavior.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that some rare conditions can only be studied through individual cases due to their uncommon nature. For instance, consider Genie Wiley – a girl discovered at age 13 having spent most of her life locked away from society by her parents. Her tragic story gave psychologists valuable insights into language acquisition and critical periods for learning.

Finally yet importantly, case studies also have practical applications for clinicians and therapists. Studying real-life examples can inform treatment plans and provide guidance on how theoretical concepts might apply to actual client situations.

• Detailed insights: Case studies offer comprehensive views on specific psychological phenomena.
• Catalyst for new theories: Real-life scenarios help shape our understanding of psychology .
• Study rare conditions: Unique cases can offer invaluable lessons about uncommon disorders.
• Practical applications: Clinicians benefit from studying real-world examples.

In short (but without wrapping up), it’s clear that case studies hold immense value within psychology – they illuminate what textbooks often can’t, offering a more nuanced understanding of human behavior.

Different Types of Psychology Case Studies

Diving headfirst into the world of psychology, I can’t help but be fascinated by the myriad types of case studies that revolve around this subject. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.

Firstly, we’ve got what’s known as ‘Explanatory Case Studies’. These are often used when a researcher wants to clarify complex phenomena or concepts. For example, a psychologist might use an explanatory case study to explore the reasons behind aggressive behavior in children.

Second on our list are ‘Exploratory Case Studies’, typically utilized when new and unexplored areas of research come up. They’re like pioneers; they pave the way for future studies. In psychological terms, exploratory case studies could be conducted to investigate emerging mental health conditions or under-researched therapeutic approaches.

Next up are ‘Descriptive Case Studies’. As the name suggests, these focus on depicting comprehensive and detailed profiles about a particular individual, group, or event within its natural context. A well-known example would be Sigmund Freud’s analysis of “Anna O”, which provided unique insights into hysteria.

Then there are ‘Intrinsic Case Studies’, which delve deep into one specific case because it is intrinsically interesting or unique in some way. It’s sorta like shining a spotlight onto an exceptional phenomenon. An instance would be studying savants—individuals with extraordinary abilities despite significant mental disabilities.

Lastly, we have ‘Instrumental Case Studies’. These aren’t focused on understanding a particular case per se but use it as an instrument to understand something else altogether—a bit like using one puzzle piece to make sense of the whole picture!

So there you have it! From explanatory to instrumental, each type serves its own unique purpose and adds another intriguing layer to our understanding of human behavior and cognition.

Exploring Real-Life Psychology Case Study Examples

Let’s roll up our sleeves and delve into some real-life psychology case study examples. By digging deep, we can glean valuable insights from these studies that have significantly contributed to our understanding of human behavior and mental processes.

First off, let me share the fascinating case of Phineas Gage. This gentleman was a 19th-century railroad construction foreman who survived an accident where a large iron rod was accidentally driven through his skull, damaging his frontal lobes. Astonishingly, he could walk and talk immediately after the accident but underwent dramatic personality changes, becoming impulsive and irresponsible. This case is often referenced in discussions about brain injury and personality change.

Next on my list is Genie Wiley’s heart-wrenching story. She was a victim of severe abuse and neglect resulting in her being socially isolated until she was 13 years old. Due to this horrific experience, Genie couldn’t acquire language skills typically as other children would do during their developmental stages. Her tragic story offers invaluable insight into the critical periods for language development in children.

Then there’s ‘Little Hans’, a classic Freudian case that delves into child psychology. At just five years old, Little Hans developed an irrational fear of horses -or so it seemed- which Sigmund Freud interpreted as symbolic anxiety stemming from suppressed sexual desires towards his mother—quite an interpretation! The study gave us Freud’s Oedipus Complex theory.

Lastly, I’d like to mention Patient H.M., an individual who became amnesiac following surgery to control seizures by removing parts of his hippocampus bilaterally. His inability to form new memories post-operation shed light on how different areas of our brains contribute to memory formation.

Each one of these real-life psychology case studies gives us a unique window into understanding complex human behaviors better – whether it’s dissecting the role our brain plays in shaping personality or unraveling the mysteries of fear, language acquisition, and memory.

How to Analyze a Psychology Case Study

Diving headfirst into a psychology case study, I understand it can seem like an intimidating task. But don’t worry, I’m here to guide you through the process.

First off, it’s essential to go through the case study thoroughly. Read it multiple times if needed. Each reading will likely reveal new information or perspectives you may have missed initially. Look out for any patterns or inconsistencies in the subject’s behavior and make note of them.

Next on your agenda should be understanding the theoretical frameworks that might be applicable in this scenario. Is there a cognitive-behavioral approach at play? Or does psychoanalysis provide better insights? Comparing these theories with observed behavior and symptoms can help shed light on underlying psychological issues.

Now, let’s talk data interpretation. If your case study includes raw data like surveys or diagnostic tests results, you’ll need to analyze them carefully. Here are some steps that could help:

• Identify what each piece of data represents
• Look for correlations between different pieces of data
• Compute statistics (mean, median, mode) if necessary
• Use graphs or charts for visual representation

Keep in mind; interpreting raw data requires both statistical knowledge and intuition about human behavior.

Finally, drafting conclusions is key in analyzing a psychology case study. Based on your observations, evaluations of theoretical approaches and interpretations of any given data – what do you conclude about the subject’s mental health status? Remember not to jump to conclusions hastily but instead base them solidly on evidence from your analysis.

In all this journey of analysis remember one thing: every person is unique and so are their experiences! So while theories and previous studies guide us, they never define an individual completely.

Applying Lessons from Psychology Case Studies

Let’s dive into how we can apply the lessons learned from psychology case studies. If you’ve ever studied psychology, you’ll know that case studies offer rich insights. They shed light on human behavior, mental health issues, and therapeutic techniques. But it’s not just about understanding theory. It’s also about implementing these valuable lessons in real-world situations.

One of the most famous psychological case studies is Phineas Gage’s story. This 19th-century railroad worker survived a severe brain injury which dramatically altered his personality. From this study, we gained crucial insight into how different brain areas are responsible for various aspects of our personality and behavior.

• Lesson: Recognizing that damage to specific brain areas can result in personality changes, enabling us to better understand certain mental conditions.

Sigmund Freud’s work with a patient known as ‘Anna O.’ is another landmark psychology case study. Anna displayed what was then called hysteria – symptoms included hallucinations and disturbances in speech and physical coordination – which Freud linked back to repressed memories of traumatic events.

• Lesson: The importance of exploring an individual’s history for understanding their current psychological problems – a principle at the heart of psychoanalysis.

Then there’s Genie Wiley’s case – a girl who suffered extreme neglect resulting in impaired social and linguistic development. Researchers used her tragic circumstances as an opportunity to explore theories around language acquisition and socialization.

• Lesson: Reinforcing the critical role early childhood experiences play in shaping cognitive development.

Lastly, let’s consider the Stanford Prison Experiment led by Philip Zimbardo examining how people conform to societal roles even when they lead to immoral actions.

• Lesson: Highlighting that situational forces can drastically impact human behavior beyond personal characteristics or morality.

These examples demonstrate that psychology case studies aren’t just academic exercises isolated from daily life. Instead, they provide profound lessons that help us make sense of complex human behaviors, mental health issues, and therapeutic strategies. By understanding these studies, we’re better equipped to apply their lessons in our own lives – whether it’s navigating personal relationships, working with diverse teams at work or even self-improvement.

Challenges and Critiques of Psychological Case Studies

Delving into the world of psychological case studies, it’s not all rosy. Sure, they offer an in-depth understanding of individual behavior and mental processes. Yet, they’re not without their share of challenges and criticisms.

One common critique is the lack of generalizability. Each case study is unique to its subject. We can’t always apply what we learn from one person to everyone else. I’ve come across instances where results varied dramatically between similar subjects, highlighting the inherent unpredictability in human behavior.

Another challenge lies within ethical boundaries. Often, sensitive information surfaces during these studies that could potentially harm the subject if disclosed improperly. To put it plainly, maintaining confidentiality while delivering a comprehensive account isn’t always easy.

Distortion due to subjective interpretations also poses substantial difficulties for psychologists conducting case studies. The researcher’s own bias may color their observations and conclusions – leading to skewed outcomes or misleading findings.

Moreover, there’s an ongoing debate about the scientific validity of case studies because they rely heavily on qualitative data rather than quantitative analysis. Some argue this makes them less reliable or objective when compared with other research methods such as experiments or surveys.

To summarize:

• Lack of generalizability
• Ethical dilemmas concerning privacy
• Potential distortion through subjective interpretation
• Questions about scientific validity

While these critiques present significant challenges, they do not diminish the value that psychological case studies bring to our understanding of human behavior and mental health struggles.

Conclusion: The Impact of Case Studies in Understanding Human Behavior

Case studies play a pivotal role in shedding light on human behavior. Throughout this article, I’ve discussed numerous examples that illustrate just how powerful these studies can be. Yet it’s the impact they have on our understanding of human psychology where their true value lies.

Take for instance the iconic study of Phineas Gage. It was through his tragic accident and subsequent personality change that we began to grasp the profound influence our frontal lobes have on our behavior. Without such a case study, we might still be in the dark about this crucial aspect of our neurology.

Let’s also consider Genie, the feral child who showed us the critical importance of social interaction during early development. Her heartbreaking story underscores just how vital appropriate nurturing is for healthy mental and emotional growth.

Here are some key takeaways from these case studies:

• Our brain structure significantly influences our behavior.
• Social interaction during formative years is vital for normal psychological development.
• Studying individual cases can reveal universal truths about human nature.

What stands out though, is not merely what these case studies teach us individually but collectively. They remind us that each person constitutes a unique combination of various factors—biological, psychological, and environmental—that shape their behavior.

One cannot overstate the significance of case studies in psychology—they are more than mere stories or isolated incidents; they’re windows into the complexities and nuances of human nature itself.

In wrapping up, I’d say that while statistics give us patterns and trends to understand groups, it’s these detailed narratives offered by case studies that help us comprehend individuals’ unique experiences within those groups—making them an invaluable part of psychological research.

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Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. Typically, data is gathered from various sources using several methods (e.g., observations & interviews).

The case study research method originated in clinical medicine (the case history, i.e., the patient’s personal history). In psychology, case studies are often confined to the study of a particular individual.

The information is mainly biographical and relates to events in the individual’s past (i.e., retrospective), as well as to significant events that are currently occurring in his or her everyday life.

The case study is not a research method, but researchers select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate material suitable for case studies.

Freud (1909a, 1909b) conducted very detailed investigations into the private lives of his patients in an attempt to both understand and help them overcome their illnesses.

This makes it clear that the case study is a method that should only be used by a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, i.e., someone with a professional qualification.

There is an ethical issue of competence. Only someone qualified to diagnose and treat a person can conduct a formal case study relating to atypical (i.e., abnormal) behavior or atypical development.

 Famous Case Studies

• Anna O – One of the most famous case studies, documenting psychoanalyst Josef Breuer’s treatment of “Anna O” (real name Bertha Pappenheim) for hysteria in the late 1800s using early psychoanalytic theory.
• Little Hans – A child psychoanalysis case study published by Sigmund Freud in 1909 analyzing his five-year-old patient Herbert Graf’s house phobia as related to the Oedipus complex.
• Bruce/Brenda – Gender identity case of the boy (Bruce) whose botched circumcision led psychologist John Money to advise gender reassignment and raise him as a girl (Brenda) in the 1960s.
• Genie Wiley – Linguistics/psychological development case of the victim of extreme isolation abuse who was studied in 1970s California for effects of early language deprivation on acquiring speech later in life.
• Phineas Gage – One of the most famous neuropsychology case studies analyzes personality changes in railroad worker Phineas Gage after an 1848 brain injury involving a tamping iron piercing his skull.

Clinical Case Studies

• Studying the effectiveness of psychotherapy approaches with an individual patient
• Assessing and treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD
• Neuropsychological cases investigating brain injuries or disorders

Child Psychology Case Studies

• Studying psychological development from birth through adolescence
• Cases of learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD
• Effects of trauma, abuse, deprivation on development

Types of Case Studies

• Explanatory case studies : Used to explore causation in order to find underlying principles. Helpful for doing qualitative analysis to explain presumed causal links.
• Exploratory case studies : Used to explore situations where an intervention being evaluated has no clear set of outcomes. It helps define questions and hypotheses for future research.
• Descriptive case studies : Describe an intervention or phenomenon and the real-life context in which it occurred. It is helpful for illustrating certain topics within an evaluation.
• Multiple-case studies : Used to explore differences between cases and replicate findings across cases. Helpful for comparing and contrasting specific cases.
• Intrinsic : Used to gain a better understanding of a particular case. Helpful for capturing the complexity of a single case.
• Collective : Used to explore a general phenomenon using multiple case studies. Helpful for jointly studying a group of cases in order to inquire into the phenomenon.

Where Do You Find Data for a Case Study?

There are several places to find data for a case study. The key is to gather data from multiple sources to get a complete picture of the case and corroborate facts or findings through triangulation of evidence. Most of this information is likely qualitative (i.e., verbal description rather than measurement), but the psychologist might also collect numerical data.

1. Primary sources

• Interviews – Interviewing key people related to the case to get their perspectives and insights. The interview is an extremely effective procedure for obtaining information about an individual, and it may be used to collect comments from the person’s friends, parents, employer, workmates, and others who have a good knowledge of the person, as well as to obtain facts from the person him or herself.
• Observations – Observing behaviors, interactions, processes, etc., related to the case as they unfold in real-time.
• Documents & Records – Reviewing private documents, diaries, public records, correspondence, meeting minutes, etc., relevant to the case.

2. Secondary sources

• News/Media – News coverage of events related to the case study.
• Academic articles – Journal articles, dissertations etc. that discuss the case.
• Government reports – Official data and records related to the case context.
• Books/films – Books, documentaries or films discussing the case.

3. Archival records

Searching historical archives, museum collections and databases to find relevant documents, visual/audio records related to the case history and context.

Public archives like newspapers, organizational records, photographic collections could all include potentially relevant pieces of information to shed light on attitudes, cultural perspectives, common practices and historical contexts related to psychology.

4. Organizational records

Organizational records offer the advantage of often having large datasets collected over time that can reveal or confirm psychological insights.

Of course, privacy and ethical concerns regarding confidential data must be navigated carefully.

However, with proper protocols, organizational records can provide invaluable context and empirical depth to qualitative case studies exploring the intersection of psychology and organizations.

• Organizational/industrial psychology research : Organizational records like employee surveys, turnover/retention data, policies, incident reports etc. may provide insight into topics like job satisfaction, workplace culture and dynamics, leadership issues, employee behaviors etc.
• Clinical psychology : Therapists/hospitals may grant access to anonymized medical records to study aspects like assessments, diagnoses, treatment plans etc. This could shed light on clinical practices.
• School psychology : Studies could utilize anonymized student records like test scores, grades, disciplinary issues, and counseling referrals to study child development, learning barriers, effectiveness of support programs, and more.

How do I Write a Case Study in Psychology?

Follow specified case study guidelines provided by a journal or your psychology tutor. General components of clinical case studies include: background, symptoms, assessments, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. Interpreting the information means the researcher decides what to include or leave out. A good case study should always clarify which information is the factual description and which is an inference or the researcher’s opinion.

1. Introduction

• Provide background on the case context and why it is of interest, presenting background information like demographics, relevant history, and presenting problem.
• Compare briefly to similar published cases if applicable. Clearly state the focus/importance of the case.

2. Case Presentation

• Describe the presenting problem in detail, including symptoms, duration,and impact on daily life.
• Include client demographics like age and gender, information about social relationships, and mental health history.
• Describe all physical, emotional, and/or sensory symptoms reported by the client.
• Use patient quotes to describe the initial complaint verbatim. Follow with full-sentence summaries of relevant history details gathered, including key components that led to a working diagnosis.
• Summarize clinical exam results, namely orthopedic/neurological tests, imaging, lab tests, etc. Note actual results rather than subjective conclusions. Provide images if clearly reproducible/anonymized.
• Clearly state the working diagnosis or clinical impression before transitioning to management.

3. Management and Outcome

• Indicate the total duration of care and number of treatments given over what timeframe. Use specific names/descriptions for any therapies/interventions applied.
• Present the results of the intervention,including any quantitative or qualitative data collected.
• For outcomes, utilize visual analog scales for pain, medication usage logs, etc., if possible. Include patient self-reports of improvement/worsening of symptoms. Note the reason for discharge/end of care.

4. Discussion

• Analyze the case, exploring contributing factors, limitations of the study, and connections to existing research.
• Analyze the effectiveness of the intervention,considering factors like participant adherence, limitations of the study, and potential alternative explanations for the results.
• Identify any questions raised in the case analysis and relate insights to established theories and current research if applicable. Avoid definitive claims about physiological explanations.
• Offer clinical implications, and suggest future research directions.

5. Additional Items

• Thank specific assistants for writing support only. No patient acknowledgments.
• References should directly support any key claims or quotes included.
• Use tables/figures/images only if substantially informative. Include permissions and legends/explanatory notes.
• Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
• Provides insight for further research.
• Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.

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 (nomothetic approach) with the aim of ‘averaging’.

Because of their in-depth, multi-sided approach, case studies often shed light on aspects of human thinking and behavior that would be unethical or impractical to study in other ways.

Research that only looks into the measurable aspects of human behavior is not likely to give us insights into the subjective dimension of experience, which is important to psychoanalytic and humanistic psychologists.

Case studies are often used in exploratory research. They can help us generate new ideas (that might be tested by other methods). They are an important way of illustrating theories and can help show how different aspects of a person’s life are related to each other.

The method is, therefore, important for psychologists who adopt a holistic point of view (i.e., humanistic psychologists ).

Limitations

• Lacking scientific rigor and providing little basis for generalization of results to the wider population.
• Researchers’ own subjective feelings may influence the case study (researcher bias).
• Difficult to replicate.
• Time-consuming and expensive.
• The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted the depth of analysis that was possible within the available resources.

Because a case study deals with only one person/event/group, we can never be sure if the case study investigated is representative of the wider body of “similar” instances. This means the conclusions drawn from a particular case may not be transferable to other settings.

Because case studies are based on the analysis of qualitative (i.e., descriptive) data , a lot depends on the psychologist’s interpretation of the information she has acquired.

This means that there is a lot of scope for Anna O , and it could be that the subjective opinions of the psychologist intrude in the assessment of what the data means.

For example, Freud has been criticized for producing case studies in which the information was sometimes distorted to fit particular behavioral theories (e.g., Little Hans ).

This is also true of Money’s interpretation of the Bruce/Brenda case study (Diamond, 1997) when he ignored evidence that went against his theory.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895).  Studies on hysteria . Standard Edition 2: London.

Curtiss, S. (1981). Genie: The case of a modern wild child .

Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, K. (1997). Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , 151(3), 298-304

Freud, S. (1909a). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306

Freud, S. (1909b). Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose (Der “Rattenmann”). Jb. psychoanal. psychopathol. Forsch ., I, p. 357-421; GW, VII, p. 379-463; Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis, SE , 10: 151-318.

Harlow J. M. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head.  Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 39 , 389–393.

Harlow, J. M. (1868).  Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head .  Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 2  (3), 327-347.

Money, J., & Ehrhardt, A. A. (1972).  Man & Woman, Boy & Girl : The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Money, J., & Tucker, P. (1975). Sexual signatures: On being a man or a woman.

Further Information

• Case Study Approach
• Case Study Method
• Enhancing the Quality of Case Studies in Health Services Research
• “We do things together” A case study of “couplehood” in dementia
• Using mixed methods for evaluating an integrative approach to cancer care: a case study

How to Write a Psychology Case Study: Expert Tips

Have you ever heard of Phineas Gage, a man whose life story became a legendary case study in the annals of psychology? In the mid-19th century, Gage, a railroad construction foreman, survived a near-fatal accident when an iron rod pierced through his skull, severely damaging his brain. What makes this tale truly remarkable is that, despite his physical recovery, Gage's personality underwent a dramatic transformation. He went from being a mild-mannered and responsible individual to becoming impulsive and unpredictable. This remarkable case marked the dawn of psychology's fascination with understanding the intricate workings of the human mind. Case studies, like the one of Phineas Gage, have been a cornerstone of our understanding of human behavior ever since.

Short Description

In this article, we'll unravel the secrets of case study psychology as the powerful tool of this field. We will explore its essence and why these investigations are so crucial in understanding human behavior. Discover the various types of case studies, gain insights from real-world examples, and uncover the essential steps and expert tips on how to craft your very own compelling study. Get ready to embark on a comprehensive exploration of this invaluable research method.

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What Is a Case Study in Psychology

A case study psychology definition can be compared to a magnifying glass turned toward a single individual, group, or phenomenon. According to our paper writer , it's a focused investigation that delves deep into the unique complexities of a particular subject. Rather than sifting through mountains of data, a case study allows us to zoom in and scrutinize the details, uncovering the 'whys' and 'hows' that often remain hidden in broader research.

A psychology case study is not about generalizations or sweeping theories; it's about the intricacies of real-life situations. It's the detective work of the field, aiming to unveil the 'story behind the data' and offering profound insights into human behavior, emotions, and experiences. So, while psychology as a whole may study the forest, a case study takes you on a journey through the trees, revealing the unique patterns, quirks, and secrets that make each one distinct.

The Significance of Psychology Case Studies

Writing a psychology case study plays a pivotal role in the world of research and understanding the human mind. Here's why they are so crucial, according to our ' do my essay ' experts:

• In-Depth Exploration: Case studies provide an opportunity to explore complex human behaviors and experiences in great detail. By diving deep into a specific case, researchers can uncover nuances that might be overlooked in broader studies.
• Unique Perspectives: Every individual and situation is unique, and case studies allow us to capture this diversity. They offer a chance to highlight the idiosyncrasies that make people who they are and situations what they are.
• Theory Testing: Case studies are a way to test and refine psychological theories in real-world scenarios. They provide practical insights that can validate or challenge existing hypotheses.
• Practical Applications: The knowledge gained from case studies can be applied to various fields, from clinical psychology to education and business. It helps professionals make informed decisions and develop effective interventions.
• Holistic Understanding: Case studies often involve a comprehensive examination of an individual's life or a particular phenomenon. This holistic approach contributes to a more profound comprehension of human behavior and the factors that influence it.

Varieties of a Psychology Case Study

When considering how to write a psychology case study, you should remember that it is a diverse field, and so are the case studies conducted within it. Let's explore the different types from our ' write my research paper ' experts:

• Descriptive Case Studies: These focus on providing a detailed description of a particular case or phenomenon. They serve as a foundation for further research and can be valuable in generating hypotheses.
• Exploratory Case Studies: Exploratory studies aim to investigate novel or scarcely explored areas within psychology. They often pave the way for more in-depth research by generating new questions and ideas.
• Explanatory Case Studies: These delve into the 'why' and 'how' of a particular case, seeking to explain the underlying factors or mechanisms that drive a particular behavior or event.
• Instrumental Case Studies: In these cases, the individual or situation under examination is instrumental in testing or illustrating a particular theory or concept in psychology.
• Intrinsic Case Studies: Contrary to instrumental case studies, intrinsic ones explore a case for its own unique significance, aiming to understand the specific details and intricacies of that case without primarily serving as a tool to test broader theories.
• Collective Case Studies: These studies involve the examination of multiple cases to identify common patterns or differences. They are helpful when researchers seek to generalize findings across a group.
• Longitudinal Case Studies: Longitudinal studies track a case over an extended period, allowing researchers to observe changes and developments over time.
• Cross-Sectional Case Studies: In contrast, cross-sectional case studies involve the examination of a case at a single point in time, offering a snapshot of that particular moment.

The Advantages of Psychology Case Studies

Learning how to write a case study offers numerous benefits, making it a valuable research method in the field. Here are some of the advantages:

• Rich Insights: Case studies provide in-depth insights into individual behavior and experiences, allowing researchers to uncover unique patterns, motivations, and complexities.
• Holistic Understanding: By examining a case in its entirety, researchers can gain a comprehensive understanding of the factors that influence human behavior, including psychological, environmental, and contextual aspects.
• Theory Development: Case studies contribute to theory development by providing real-world examples that can validate or refine existing psychological theories.
• Personalized Approach: Researchers can tailor their methods to fit the specific case, making it a flexible approach that can adapt to the unique characteristics of the subject.
• Application in Practice: The knowledge gained from case studies can be applied in various practical settings, such as clinical psychology, education, and organizational management, to develop more effective interventions and solutions.
• Real-World Relevance: Psychology case studies often address real-life issues, making the findings relevant and applicable to everyday situations.
• Qualitative Data: They generate qualitative data, which can be rich in detail and context, offering a deeper understanding of the subject matter.
• Hypothesis Generation: Case studies can spark new research questions and hypotheses, guiding further investigations in psychology.
• Ethical Considerations: In some cases, case studies can be conducted in situations where experimental research may not be ethical, providing valuable insights that would otherwise be inaccessible.
• Educational Value: Case studies are commonly used as teaching tools, helping students apply theoretical knowledge to practical scenarios and encouraging critical thinking.

How to Write a Psychology Case Study

Crafting a psychology case study requires a meticulous approach that combines the art of storytelling with the precision of scientific analysis. In this section, we'll provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to create an engaging and informative psychology case study, from selecting the right subject to presenting your findings effectively.

Step 1: Gathering Information for Subject Profiling

To create a comprehensive psychology case study, the first crucial step is gathering all the necessary information to build a detailed profile of your subject. This profile forms the backbone of your study, offering a deeper understanding of the individual or situation you're examining.

According to our case study writing service , you should begin by collecting a range of data, including personal history, demographics, behavioral observations, and any relevant documentation. Interviews, surveys, and direct observations are common methods to gather this information. Ensure that the data you collect is relevant to the specific aspects of the subject's life or behavior that you intend to investigate.

By meticulously gathering and organizing this data, you'll lay the foundation for a robust case study that not only informs your readers but also provides the context needed to make meaningful observations and draw insightful conclusions.

Step 2: Selecting a Case Study Method

Once you have gathered all the essential information about your subject, the next step in crafting a psychology case study is to choose the most appropriate case study method. The method you select will determine how you approach the analysis and presentation of your findings. Here are some common case study methods to consider:

• Single-Subject Case Study: This method focuses on a single individual or a particular event, offering a detailed examination of that subject's experiences and behaviors.
• Comparative Case Study: In this approach, you analyze two or more cases to draw comparisons or contrasts, revealing patterns or differences among them.
• Longitudinal Case Study: A longitudinal study involves tracking a subject or group over an extended period, observing changes and developments over time.
• Cross-Sectional Case Study: This method involves analyzing subjects at a specific point in time, offering a snapshot of their current state.
• Exploratory Case Study: Exploratory studies are ideal for investigating new or underexplored areas within psychology.
• Explanatory Case Study: If your goal is to uncover the underlying factors and mechanisms behind a specific behavior or phenomenon, the explanatory case study is a suitable choice.

Step 3: Gathering Background Information on the Subject

In the process of learning how to write a psychology case study, it's essential to delve into the subject's background to build a complete and meaningful narrative. The background information serves as a crucial context for understanding the individual or situation under investigation.

To gather this information effectively:

• Personal History: Explore the subject's life history, including their upbringing, family background, education, and career path. These details provide insights into their development and experiences.
• Demographics: Collect demographic data, such as age, gender, and cultural background, as part of your data collection process. These factors can be influential in understanding behavior and experiences.
• Relevant Events: Identify any significant life events, experiences, or transitions that might have had an impact on the subject's psychology and behavior.
• Psychological Factors: Assess the subject's psychological profile, including personality traits, cognitive abilities, and emotional well-being, if applicable.
• Social and Environmental Factors: Consider the subject's social and environmental context, including relationships, living conditions, and cultural influences.

Step 4: Detailing the Subject's Challenges

While writing a psychology case study, it is crucial to provide a thorough description of the subject's symptoms or the challenges they are facing. This step allows you to dive deeper into the specific issues that are the focus of your study, providing clarity and context for your readers.

To effectively describe the subject's symptoms or challenges, consider the following from our psychology essay writing service :

• Symptomatology: Enumerate the symptoms, behaviors, or conditions that the subject is experiencing. This could include emotional states, cognitive patterns, or any psychological distress.
• Onset and Duration: Specify when the symptoms or challenges began and how long they have persisted. This timeline can offer insights into the progression of the issue.
• Impact: Discuss the impact of these symptoms on the subject's daily life, relationships, and overall well-being. Consider their functional impairment and how it relates to the observed issues.
• Relevant Diagnoses: If applicable, mention any psychological or psychiatric diagnoses that have been made in relation to the subject's symptoms. This information can shed light on the clinical context of the case.

Step 5: Analyzing Data and Establishing a Diagnosis

Once you have gathered all the necessary information and described the subject's symptoms or challenges, the next critical step is to analyze the data and, if applicable, establish a diagnosis.

To effectively analyze the data and potentially make a diagnosis:

• Data Synthesis: Organize and synthesize the collected data, bringing together all the relevant information in a coherent and structured manner.
• Pattern Recognition: Identify patterns, themes, and connections within the data. Look for recurring behaviors, triggers, or factors that might contribute to the observed symptoms or challenges.
• Comparison with Diagnostic Criteria: If the study involves diagnosing a psychological condition, compare the subject's symptoms and experiences with established diagnostic criteria, such as those found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
• Professional Consultation: It is advisable to consult with qualified professionals, such as clinical psychologists or psychiatrists, to ensure that the diagnosis, if applicable, is accurate and well-informed.
• Thorough Assessment: Ensure a comprehensive evaluation of the data, considering all possible factors and nuances before reaching any conclusions.

Step 6: Choosing an Intervention Strategy

Choosing an appropriate intervention approach is a pivotal phase in case study psychology, especially if your subject's case involves therapeutic considerations. Here's how to navigate this step effectively:

• Review Findings: Revisit the data and analysis you've conducted to gain a comprehensive understanding of the subject's symptoms, challenges, and needs.
• Consultation: If you're not a qualified mental health professional, it's advisable to consult with experts in the field, such as clinical psychologists or psychiatrists. They can offer valuable insights and recommendations for treatment.
• Tailored Approach: Select a treatment approach that is tailored to the subject's specific needs and diagnosis, if applicable. This could involve psychotherapy, medication, lifestyle changes, or a combination of interventions.
• Goal Setting: Clearly define the goals and objectives of the chosen treatment approach. What do you hope to achieve, and how will progress be measured?
• Informed Consent: If the subject is involved in the decision-making process, ensure they provide informed consent and are fully aware of the chosen treatment's details, potential benefits, and risks.
• Implementation and Monitoring: Once the treatment plan is established, put it into action and closely monitor the subject's progress. Make necessary adjustments based on their responses and evolving needs.
• Ethical Considerations: Be mindful of ethical standards and maintain the subject's confidentiality and well-being throughout the treatment process.

Step 7: Explaining Treatment Objectives and Procedures

In the final phases of your psychology case study, it's essential to provide a clear and detailed description of the treatment goals and processes that have been implemented. This step ensures that your readers understand the therapeutic journey and its intended outcomes.

Here's how to effectively describe treatment goals and processes:

• Specific Goals: Outline the specific goals of the chosen treatment approach. What are you aiming to achieve in terms of the subject's well-being, symptom reduction, or overall improvement?
• Interventions: Describe the therapeutic interventions that have been employed, including psychotherapeutic techniques, medications, or other strategies. Explain how these interventions are intended to address the subject's challenges.
• Timelines: Specify the expected timeline for achieving treatment goals. This may include short-term and long-term objectives, as well as milestones for assessing progress.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: Discuss the methods used to monitor and evaluate the subject's response to treatment. How are you measuring progress or setbacks, and how frequently are assessments conducted?
• Adjustments: Explain how the treatment plan is adaptable as you would in a persuasive essay . If modifications to the goals or interventions are required, clarify the decision-making process for making such adjustments.
• Collaboration: If relevant, highlight any collaboration with other professionals involved in the subject's care, emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach for comprehensive treatment.
• Patient Involvement: If the subject is actively engaged in their treatment, detail their role, responsibilities, and any tools or resources provided to support their participation.

Step 8: Crafting the Discussion and Concluding Remarks

In the final phase of your psychology case study, the discussion section is where you interpret the findings, reflect on the significance of your study, and offer insights into the broader implications of the case. Here's how to effectively write this section:

• Interpretation: Begin by interpreting the data and analysis you've presented in your case study. What do the findings reveal about the subject's psychology, behavior, or experiences?
• Relevance to Research Questions: Discuss how your findings align with or deviate from the initial research questions or hypotheses you set out to investigate.
• Comparison with Literature: Compare your findings with existing literature and research in the field of psychology. Highlight any consistencies or disparities and explain their significance.
• Clinical Considerations: If your case study has clinical or practical relevance, address the implications for therapeutic approaches, interventions, or clinical practices.
• Generalizability: Evaluate the extent to which the insights from your case study can be generalized to a broader population or other similar cases.
• Strengths and Limitations: Be candid about the strengths and limitations of your case study. Acknowledge any constraints or biases and explain how they might have influenced the results.
• Future Research Directions: Suggest areas for future research or additional case studies that could build on your findings and deepen our understanding of the subject matter.
• Conclusion: Summarize the key takeaways from your case study and provide a concise conclusion that encapsulates the main findings and their significance.

5 Helpful Tips for Crafting a Psychology Case Study

Much like learning how to write a synthesis essay , writing a compelling case study involves careful planning and attention to detail. Here are some essential guidelines to help you in the process:

• Consider Cultural Sensitivity: Recognize the importance of cultural diversity and sensitivity in your case study. Take into account the cultural background of your subject and its potential impact on their behavior and experiences.
• Use Clear Citations: Properly cite all sources, including previous research, theories, and relevant literature. Accurate citations lend credibility to your case study and acknowledge the work of others.
• Engage in Peer Discussion: Engage in discussions with peers or colleagues in the field throughout the case study process. Collaborative brainstorming and sharing insights can lead to a more well-rounded study.
• Be Mindful of Ethics: Continuously monitor and reassess the ethical considerations of your case study, especially when it involves sensitive topics or individuals. Prioritize the well-being and rights of your participants.
• Practice Patience and Persistence: Case studies can be time-consuming and may encounter setbacks. Exercise patience and persistence to ensure the quality and comprehensiveness of your research.

Case Study Psychology Example

In this psychology case study example, we delve into a compelling story that serves as a window into the fascinating realm of psychological research, offering valuable insights and practical applications.

Final Outlook

As we conclude this comprehensive writing guide on how to write a psychology case study, remember that every case holds a unique story waiting to be unraveled. The art of crafting a compelling case study lies in your hands, offering a window into the intricate world of the human mind. We encourage you to embark on your own investigative journeys, armed with the knowledge and skills acquired here, to contribute to the ever-evolving landscape of psychology.

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is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

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How to Write a Psychology Case Study in 8 Easy Steps

Writing a psychology case study involves an in-depth analysis of a person, organization, or event to learn more about psychological phenomena. The study usually includes an introduction, case description, analysis, and conclusion. The objective is to describe the topic thoroughly, support the development of theories, and present real-world applications for psychological interventions and procedures.

Therefore, it becomes difficult to figure out how to write a Psychology Case Study. Every aspect may seem difficult when writing one, whether you’re a professional, researcher, or student. It takes skill and accuracy to deal with it all.

We at Casestudyhelp.com can help with case study assignments . We provide effective help on How to Write a Psychology Case Study. We guide all your requirements. Our team of professionals and experts is committed to assisting you in producing case studies that are comprehensive, perceptive, and unique. You can complete any psychology case study with our help, guaranteeing academic and professional success.

What is a Psychology Case Study?

A case study in psychology is a comprehensive examination of a person, organization, or occasion. It’s a study technique frequently employed in psychology to acquire in-depth data and understand the subjects’ behaviour, ideas, and feelings. By scrutinizing just one case, psychologists can investigate complex problems that may prove challenging to tackle using alternative study approaches or the Case Study Method.

Why is Psychology Case Studies Important?

Psychology case studies are vital because they provide a good understanding of the Psychology case study topics . They make it possible for researchers to get deeply into the minute details of mental processes and behaviour in people.

Moreover, a Case Study Report in Psychology can reveal patterns and provide a basis for developing theories and interventions. They are also excellent teaching resources, providing practitioners and students with in-depth examples to learn from.

Further, psychology case studies are invaluable for several reasons:

Detailed analysis

They provide a detailed examination of a single subject. This allows a better understanding of complex psychological issues in all Psychology case study topics.

Practical application

Case studies help bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and real-world scenarios. At Casestuddyhelp.com, we provide many examples of psychology case studies!

Theoretical foundations

They help grow and improve psychological theories. With Casestudyhelp.com, you will always get a psychology case study template to help you understand it better.

Educational benefits

Case studies are an excellent  teaching tool because they offer real-world examples of psychological concepts and treatment techniques. Writing a psychology case study with Casestudyhelp.com will give you an overview of these concepts !

Perspectives that are unique

Psychologists can better understand psychological phenomena more complexly through analysis of psychology case studies.

A Case Study method is an excellent tool for exploring various psychological issues because it is adaptable to various individuals and circumstances.

In essence, psychology case studies are essential for advancing the field of psychology, offering detailed, real-world insights.

Trust us at Casestudyhelp.com to help you understand the dynamics of a psychological case study while providing the best services in psychology case study writing.

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Must Read: Why Students Prefer Case Study Help across the Globe

Types of Psychology Case Studies

Psychology case studies are available in various formats, each with a particular function and set of insights. Researchers and students can choose the best psychology case study analysis for their specific needs by solidly grasping these various categories. Different (main) types of topics we at Casestudyhelp.com help with are as follows:

Descriptive Case Studies

Descriptive case studies thoroughly describe the topic without attempting to establish a causal connection. They put a lot of effort into capturing the traits of a person or a group and their environment. Psychology case study writing is frequently employed to grasp a particular case thoroughly.

Exploratory Case Studies

An exploratory Psychology Case Study Report is a preliminary investigation designed to answer research questions and potential lines of inquiry. It then helps expand the scope to gain more insight into the topic. These investigations help explore new fields.

Explanatory Case Studies

The purpose of explanatory case studies is to clarify the origins and consequences of a specific occurrence. Explanatory psychology case study format offers a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms. It examines the interconnections between various components.

Intrinsic Case Studies

Studies of intrinsic cases concentrate on a particular, compelling example. The study’s subject is particularly interesting because of its unique qualities and importance. The goal of an intrinsic psychology case study is to focus on a particular case.

Instrumental Case Studies

Instrumental case studies offer perspectives on more significant problems beyond the situation. The main objective of helping with a psychology case study of this kind is to comprehend specific phenomena more thoroughly. In that event, the case itself is of secondary importance.

Collective Case Studies

Multiple-case studies, or collective case studies, explore multiple cases simultaneously or chronologically. Researchers might find trends and reach stronger conclusions, giving a deeper understanding of the problem under investigation.

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Also Read: How to Write an Effective Case Study Paper

Psychology Case Study Example

Below is a brief and compact example of efficiently writing a psychology case study. Consider the following:

Anna, a 32-year-old woman, showed severe anxiety and depression after losing her job and ending a long-term relationship. These events caused significant emotional distress, impacting her daily life.

Case Description

Anna felt persistent sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. She had trouble sleeping, lost her appetite, and no longer enjoyed the activities she once did. Her anxiety included constant worry, restlessness, a racing heart, and sweating.

Clinical interviews and assessments confirmed that Anna’s symptoms matched Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The study explored how her recent life events influenced her psychological symptoms.

Intervention

Anna’s treatment included cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication. CBT helped her identify and challenge negative thoughts, develop coping strategies, and gradually re-engage in social activities. Medication managed her anxiety and depressive symptoms.

After three months, Anna’s anxiety and depression significantly decreased. The combination of therapy and medication restored her sense of control and well-being.

This case study shows that CBT and medication effectively treat co-occurring anxiety and depression. It emphasizes the need for an approach addressing psychological and situational mental health factors.

Contact us to learn more and get help writing a psychology case study at Casestudyhelp.com.

Preparing a Psychology Case Study Report like this can be exhausting. If you need help with a Psychology case study, CaseStudyHelp Experts can assist you in crafting comprehensive and professional case studies. These services provide expert guidance, ensuring your case study is thorough, well-organized, and insightful.

Benefits of Psychology Case Studies

Underlined are some of the benefits of writing a psychology case study:

• Teaches to tackle different and complex problems in psychology
• Provides essential details about a topic that may be missing in numeric outcomes
• Helps to further look into a potential problem
• Provides a basis for forming new theories
• Expands the scope of developing better treatments.

For those who find the process challenging, seeking assistance with psychology case study writing can be highly beneficial. Case study assignment writing services provide expert guidance, ensuring your case studies are thorough, well-structured, and insightful. With professional support, you can enhance the quality of your work and achieve academic success.

How to Write a Psychology Case Study – Step-by-Step Guide

Use the following psychology case study format crafted by us at Casestudyhelp.com; you can craft the perfect study report ever:

Step 1: Choose a Relevant Subject and its Topic

The first crucial step is selecting a subject. If it’s Psychology, choose the appropriate Psychology case study topics. Choose an individual, group, event, or situation that offers valuable insights into psychological phenomena. Ensure the subject is accessible, willing to participate, and obtains necessary permissions.

Step 2: Choose a Case Study Method

There are several Psychology case study methods you can choose from:

• Descriptive Case Studies : Focus on offering a detailed account of the subject without seeking to establish causal relationships.
• Exploratory Case Studies : Used to identify questions and hypotheses for further research. These typically need to be more structured and provide a broad overview.
• Explanatory Case Studies : Aim to explain the causal relationships in real-life contexts, making them ideal for testing theories.
• Intrinsic Case Studies : Focused on understanding the unique aspects of the subject due to genuine interest.
• Instrumental Case Studies : Provide insights into broader issues or phenomena through the specific Case.

Step 3: Gather Background Information

Collecting comprehensive background information is essential for a thorough understanding of the subject. This information should include:

• Personal History : Details about the subject’s early life, family background, education, and significant life events.
• Medical History : Information about physical health issues, hospitalizations, and medications.
• Psychological History : Previous psychological diagnoses, therapies, and relevant psychological assessments.
• Current Situation : The subject’s living situation, employment status, relationships, and daily routines.
• Behavioural Observations : Notes on the subject’s behaviour during interviews and observations.
• Interview Data : Insights from interviews with the subject and significant others, such as family members or close friends.

Step 4: Discuss the Subject’s Challenges

Identify and articulate the psychological challenges faced by the subject. This involves describing the symptoms, behaviours, and contextual factors contributing to these challenges. Consider the following:

• Symptom Description : Detailed descriptions of the subject’s symptoms, including frequency, intensity, and duration.
• Behavioural Patterns : Analysis of recurring behaviours that indicate underlying psychological issues.
• Environmental Factors : Contextual elements such as family dynamics, social relationships, and living conditions that may impact the subject’s psychological state.
• Impact on Daily Life : The psychological challenges affect the subject’s daily functioning, including work, social interactions, and personal well-being.

Clearly defining these challenges sets the stage for your analysis and subsequent diagnosis.

Step 5: Study the Data and Specify a Diagnosis

Study the collected data to recognize patterns and relationships. This step involves:

• Data Organization : Systematically organizing the data to identify significant themes and patterns.
• Theoretical Application : Interpreting the data requires applying relevant psychological theories. For example, cognitive-behavioural theory can help understand thought patterns, and psychodynamic theory can explore unconscious processes.
• Diagnostic Criteria : These are the criteria used to compare the subject’s symptoms and behaviours with established diagnostic criteria, such as those in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
• Hypothesis Testing : Testing your initial hypothesis against the collected data to see if it holds or needs adjustment.

Step 6: Choose a Treatment Approach

Selecting an appropriate treatment approach is critical. Here are some common methods:

• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) : Focuses on changing negative thought patterns and behaviors. It is an effective treatment strategy for anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders.
• Psychodynamic Therapy : Explores unconscious processes and past experiences to understand current behaviour. It helps treat personality disorders and complex emotional issues.
• Humanistic Therapy : Emphasizes personal growth and self-fulfilment, focusing on the individual’s potential and self-awareness.
• Behavioural Therapy: Targets changing specific behaviours through conditioning techniques. It is often used to treat phobias and compulsive behaviours.
• Family Therapy : Involves treating the family unit to address systemic issues. It is effective for resolving family conflicts and improving communication.

Choosing the right approach involves considering the subject’s needs, preferences, and psychological challenges.

Also Read:  181+ Latest Case Study Topics for Students to Think About

Step 7: Explaining Treatment Objectives and Procedures

Clearly outline the objectives of the chosen treatment approach. Describe the procedures and techniques that will be used to achieve these objectives. It includes:

• Therapy Goals : Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for the therapy.
• Intervention Techniques : Detailed descriptions of the therapeutic techniques and strategies will be employed.
• Session Structure : An outline of therapy sessions’ frequency, duration, and format.
• Expected Outcomes : Anticipated improvements and milestones in the subject’s psychological state.

Explaining these elements helps ensure transparency and sets clear expectations for the treatment process.

Step 8: Write a Discussion Section

The discussion section is where you interpret your findings and evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment. It involves:

• Findings Interpretation : Discuss how your findings align with or differ from existing literature and theories.
• Treatment Evaluation : Assessing the effectiveness of the treatment approach based on the subject’s progress and any changes in their symptoms.
• Implications : Exploring the broader implications of your case study for understanding the psychological phenomena in question.
• Limitations : Acknowledging any limitations of your study, such as sample size, potential biases, or external factors that may have influenced the results.
• Future Research : Suggesting areas for future research that could build on your findings.

For additional support, consider utilizing case study help services to enhance the quality of your work.

Also Read:  How To Write A Convincing Case Study In 7 Easy Steps?

Tips for Writing an Effective Psychology Case Study

We have listed a few important pointers in crafting an effective case study:

• Have a fair tone and avoid bias. Always be objective in your Psychology Case Study Report.
• Offer complete explanations and entire details. Always keep the information specific.
• Write straightforwardly. Your writing should be to the point.
• The language should be clear and easy to read.
• Use headings and subheadings. Maintain a static psychology case study format.
• To improve your psychology case study analysis, consider multiple viewpoints.
• To ensure clarity in your writing, proofread your psychology case study format and work.

Seek Professional Help: If you face difficulties with case study assignments, consider asking for help. Professional academic assistance can provide valuable guidance and ensure your case study meets high academic standards.

Must Read:  A Complete Guide to Writing an Effective Case Study

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Psychology Case Studies

A psychology case study can often lead to many mistakes, such as forming a bias in your judgement due to personal attachment. Read to learn what to avoid!

Avoid lacking focus throughout:

Make your research specific, and stay focused on the subject. Hence, follow a proper psychology case study format.

Make sure your information is adequate:

Before choosing a topic, check if enough information can be collected. Contact us at casestudyhelp.com today to prepare the best Psychology Case Study Report.

Do not form bias of any kind:

Avoid being partial at any point. Reach out to us at Casestudhelp.com for the proper psychology case study template to write!

Do not overly generalize a conclusion:

Be mindful of making general statements from a topic with a broad scope. Casestudyhelp.com provides the right Case Study Method to conclude the best possible report.

Abide by the required ethics:

Maintaining confidentiality and the welfare of the subject is very important. Our psychology case study examples make it easy to understand how to achieve this.

Visit Casestudyhelp.com to understand how writing a psychology case study works despite the toughness. Contact us today!

Also Read:  How to Write a Critical Evaluation Essay in Psychology?

Conclusion: The Value of Psychology Case Studies

Psychology case studies are wonderful resources that increase our knowledge of human behaviour. This is mainly achieved through in-depth psychology case study analysis. Mentioned below are some important points regarding the values these case studies provide:

• These studies offer important insights into complex Psychology case study topics that other case study methods may overlook.
• The  case study method’s flexibility allows researchers to match their approach to various subjects, making  it a versatile tool in the field of psychology.
• Writing a psychology case study provides rich and detailed data, as well as both theoretical and practical solutions.

To summarize, Help with psychology case studies is essential as they provide detailed insights that improve our knowledge of human behaviour, both in theory and practice.

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What Is a Case Study?

Why is everyone talking about case study help, how to write a case study report in social work, get expert help in mba case study report writing, how to write an effective case study paper.

How to Write a Good Case Study in Psychology (A Step-by-Step Guide)

• March 4, 2022
• Teaching Kids

A case study psychology is a type of research that uses real-life examples to help understand psychological concepts. This type of research can be used in a variety of settings, such as business, health care, education, and social services.

Case studies are typically composed of three parts: the problem or issue, the intervention or treatment, and the outcome. The problem or issue is what caused the person to seek help, and the intervention or treatment is what was done to try to solve it. The outcome is how things changed after the intervention or treatment was implemented.

Step by step instructions on how to write an effective case study in Psychology

1. Gain Knowledge About The Topic

To write a case study in psychology, you will need to do some research on the topic you are writing about. Make sure that you read journal articles, books, a case study example, and any other reliable sources in order to get a comprehensive understanding of the topic. You will also need to find a suitable example or examples of how psychological concepts have been applied in real-life situations. For example, a psychology student might interview a friend about how she balances her time between work and studies.

2. Research the Individual or Event

In this case, you can choose either a person or an event for your case study research. If you are writing about a specific event, look for past issues that relate to it and any ongoing ones that may have a connection to it.

You may choose to write about a specific problem or situation that affected the individual in some way, such as how it relates to their psychology. For example, you may want to study a man who has been in relationships with several women within the same time period and what effects this has on them.

If you are writing about a person, obtain biographical information and look for any psychological assessments that have been done on the individual.

3. Analyze The Information

Once you have gathered all the necessary information, it is time to go through it and identify important facts that will influence your paper.

This is where you use your skills of inductive and deductive reasoning, to analyze the information that you have gathered. You will usually look for patterns within this information and draw conclusions about how it has affected or contributed to their psychology.

Summarize each point in order to make note-taking easier later on when writing your case study.

4. Draft A Plan

Once you have gathered all the relevant information, it is time to start drafting a plan for your case study. This case study format should include an introduction, body, and conclusion.

The body of the case study should be divided into different sections that will discuss different aspects of the topic. Make sure that your argument is clear and concise, and that you use data to support your ideas, rather than simply stating them as facts or personal opinions.

5. Structure Your Work

As mentioned in the previous step, the body of the case study should be divided into different sections for effective writing. The introduction should include a short paragraph about what you plan to write in the study and what the case study method will be, while the conclusion should summarize your argument and leave the reader with a sense of closure. Each section in the body should have its own heading to help the reader follow your line of argument.

6. Write The Case Study

Now that you have a plan and structure for your case study, it is time to start writing!

Even if you are writing a case study on your own, break it down into small sections and make sure you include every aspect of the topic within each section. Think about how you will present your case study and what points are essential to make in the body.

Include details, quotes, infographics or numeric data that help support your arguments and overall conclusion. This is what makes a great case study: An overview of every aspect of the topic researched within it!

7. Write a Theoretical Introduction

In this section, you will introduce your topic and explain why it is significant in relation to the area of psychology that you are studying.

In the theoretical introduction, you will write about the basic principles of human psychology and growth, then explain how you think this situation relates to your study topic.

After explaining the theoretical part in detail, state why studying this particular aspect will help psychologists understand aspects of humanity within different areas such as sociology or anthropology.

8. Describe How The Individual or Event Was Studied

Researchers in psychology write case studies to gain an in-depth understanding of specific topics pertaining to their field. For this reason, you should explain how you came across your sources of information and why this was beneficial to your research.

In describing how the individual or event was studied, you may also include information about what you discovered through your research and why it is important.

9. Write a Conclusion

In this part of your essay, bring together all key points discussed in the course of writing the case study. You should summarize what you have written and state your own conclusions based on the research that you have conducted.

10. Edit And Proofread The Case Study

Once you have finished writing the case study, it is important to edit and proofread it carefully. This will help to correct any grammatical errors that may have slipped into the writing process, and will also ensure that you are producing an accurate document. You might find it helpful to seek advice from someone who has experience in this field before sending it off for submission.

11. Submit It To The Appropriate Sources

When submitting your case study, make sure that you are sending it to the correct journal or publication. Check the submission guidelines carefully to make sure that your case study meets all the requirements.

By following these steps, you can create a well-written case study that will provide readers with a clear understanding of the topic at hand. Remember to take your time while researching and writing, and to be as thorough as possible in order to produce a high-quality document. Good luck!

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Methodology

• What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on May 8, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

Table of contents

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyze the case, other interesting articles.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

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Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

• Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
• Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
• Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
• Open up new directions for future research

TipIf your research is more practical in nature and aims to simultaneously investigate an issue as you solve it, consider conducting action research instead.

Unlike quantitative or experimental research , a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

Example of an outlying case studyIn the 1960s the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was discovered to have extremely low rates of heart disease compared to the US average. It became an important case study for understanding previously neglected causes of heart disease.

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience or phenomenon.

Example of a representative case studyIn the 1920s, two sociologists used Muncie, Indiana as a case study of a typical American city that supposedly exemplified the changing culture of the US at the time.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

• Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
• Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
• Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews , observations , and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data.

Example of a mixed methods case studyFor a case study of a wind farm development in a rural area, you could collect quantitative data on employment rates and business revenue, collect qualitative data on local people’s perceptions and experiences, and analyze local and national media coverage of the development.

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis , with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyze its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Ecological validity

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

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15 Famous Experiments and Case Studies in Psychology

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Psychology has seen thousands upon thousands of research studies over the years. Most of these studies have helped shape our current understanding of human thoughts, behavior, and feelings.

The psychology case studies in this list are considered classic examples of psychological case studies and experiments, which are still being taught in introductory psychology courses up to this day.

Some studies, however, were downright shocking and controversial that you’d probably wonder why such studies were conducted back in the day. Imagine participating in an experiment for a small reward or extra class credit, only to be left scarred for life. These kinds of studies, however, paved the way for a more ethical approach to studying psychology and implementation of research standards such as the use of debriefing in psychology research .

Case Study vs. Experiment

Before we dive into the list of the most famous studies in psychology, let us first review the difference between case studies and experiments.

• It is an in-depth study and analysis of an individual, group, community, or phenomenon. The results of a case study cannot be applied to the whole population, but they can provide insights for further studies.
• It often uses qualitative research methods such as observations, surveys, and interviews.
• It is often conducted in real-life settings rather than in controlled environments.
• An experiment is a type of study done on a sample or group of random participants, the results of which can be generalized to the whole population.
• It often uses quantitative research methods that rely on numbers and statistics.
• It is conducted in controlled environments, wherein some things or situations are manipulated.

See Also: Experimental vs Observational Studies

Famous Experiments in Psychology

1. the marshmallow experiment.

Psychologist Walter Mischel conducted the marshmallow experiment at Stanford University in the 1960s to early 1970s. It was a simple test that aimed to define the connection between delayed gratification and success in life.

The instructions were fairly straightforward: children ages 4-6 were presented a piece of marshmallow on a table and they were told that they would receive a second piece if they could wait for 15 minutes without eating the first marshmallow.

About one-third of the 600 participants succeeded in delaying gratification to receive the second marshmallow. Mischel and his team followed up on these participants in the 1990s, learning that those who had the willpower to wait for a larger reward experienced more success in life in terms of SAT scores and other metrics.

This case study also supported self-control theory , a theory in criminology that holds that people with greater self-control are less likely to end up in trouble with the law!

The classic marshmallow experiment, however, was debunked in a 2018 replication study done by Tyler Watts and colleagues.

This more recent experiment had a larger group of participants (900) and a better representation of the general population when it comes to race and ethnicity. In this study, the researchers found out that the ability to wait for a second marshmallow does not depend on willpower alone but more so on the economic background and social status of the participants.

2. The Bystander Effect

In 1694, Kitty Genovese was murdered in the neighborhood of Kew Gardens, New York. It was told that there were up to 38 witnesses and onlookers in the vicinity of the crime scene, but nobody did anything to stop the murder or call for help.

Such tragedy was the catalyst that inspired social psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley to formulate the phenomenon called bystander effect or bystander apathy .

Subsequent investigations showed that this story was exaggerated and inaccurate, as there were actually only about a dozen witnesses, at least two of whom called the police. But the case of Kitty Genovese led to various studies that aim to shed light on the bystander phenomenon.

Latane and Darley tested bystander intervention in an experimental study . Participants were asked to answer a questionnaire inside a room, and they would either be alone or with two other participants (who were actually actors or confederates in the study). Smoke would then come out from under the door. The reaction time of participants was tested — how long would it take them to report the smoke to the authorities or the experimenters?

The results showed that participants who were alone in the room reported the smoke faster than participants who were with two passive others. The study suggests that the more onlookers are present in an emergency situation, the less likely someone would step up to help, a social phenomenon now popularly called the bystander effect.

3. Asch Conformity Study

Have you ever made a decision against your better judgment just to fit in with your friends or family? The Asch Conformity Studies will help you understand this kind of situation better.

In this experiment, a group of participants were shown three numbered lines of different lengths and asked to identify the longest of them all. However, only one true participant was present in every group and the rest were actors, most of whom told the wrong answer.

Results showed that the participants went for the wrong answer, even though they knew which line was the longest one in the first place. When the participants were asked why they identified the wrong one, they said that they didn’t want to be branded as strange or peculiar.

This study goes to show that there are situations in life when people prefer fitting in than being right. It also tells that there is power in numbers — a group’s decision can overwhelm a person and make them doubt their judgment.

4. The Bobo Doll Experiment

The Bobo Doll Experiment was conducted by Dr. Albert Bandura, the proponent of social learning theory .

Back in the 1960s, the Nature vs. Nurture debate was a popular topic among psychologists. Bandura contributed to this discussion by proposing that human behavior is mostly influenced by environmental rather than genetic factors.

In the Bobo Doll Experiment, children were divided into three groups: one group was shown a video in which an adult acted aggressively toward the Bobo Doll, the second group was shown a video in which an adult play with the Bobo Doll, and the third group served as the control group where no video was shown.

The children were then led to a room with different kinds of toys, including the Bobo Doll they’ve seen in the video. Results showed that children tend to imitate the adults in the video. Those who were presented the aggressive model acted aggressively toward the Bobo Doll while those who were presented the passive model showed less aggression.

While the Bobo Doll Experiment can no longer be replicated because of ethical concerns, it has laid out the foundations of social learning theory and helped us understand the degree of influence adult behavior has on children.

5. Blue Eye / Brown Eye Experiment

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott conducted an experiment in her class. Although not a formal experiment in controlled settings, A Class Divided is a good example of a social experiment to help children understand the concept of racism and discrimination.

The class was divided into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. For one day, Elliott gave preferential treatment to her blue-eyed students, giving them more attention and pampering them with rewards. The next day, it was the brown-eyed students’ turn to receive extra favors and privileges.

As a result, whichever group of students was given preferential treatment performed exceptionally well in class, had higher quiz scores, and recited more frequently; students who were discriminated against felt humiliated, answered poorly in tests, and became uncertain with their answers in class.

This study is now widely taught in sociocultural psychology classes.

6. Stanford Prison Experiment

One of the most controversial and widely-cited studies in psychology is the Stanford Prison Experiment , conducted by Philip Zimbardo at the basement of the Stanford psychology building in 1971. The hypothesis was that abusive behavior in prisons is influenced by the personality traits of the prisoners and prison guards.

The participants in the experiment were college students who were randomly assigned as either a prisoner or a prison guard. The prison guards were then told to run the simulated prison for two weeks. However, the experiment had to be stopped in just 6 days.

The prison guards abused their authority and harassed the prisoners through verbal and physical means. The prisoners, on the other hand, showed submissive behavior. Zimbardo decided to stop the experiment because the prisoners were showing signs of emotional and physical breakdown.

Although the experiment wasn’t completed, the results strongly showed that people can easily get into a social role when others expect them to, especially when it’s highly stereotyped .

7. The Halo Effect

Have you ever wondered why toothpastes and other dental products are endorsed in advertisements by celebrities more often than dentists? The Halo Effect is one of the reasons!

The Halo Effect shows how one favorable attribute of a person can gain them positive perceptions in other attributes. In the case of product advertisements, attractive celebrities are also perceived as intelligent and knowledgeable of a certain subject matter even though they’re not technically experts.

The Halo Effect originated in a classic study done by Edward Thorndike in the early 1900s. He asked military commanding officers to rate their subordinates based on different qualities, such as physical appearance, leadership, dependability, and intelligence.

The results showed that high ratings of a particular quality influences the ratings of other qualities, producing a halo effect of overall high ratings. The opposite also applied, which means that a negative rating in one quality also correlated to negative ratings in other qualities.

Experiments on the Halo Effect came in various formats as well, supporting Thorndike’s original theory. This phenomenon suggests that our perception of other people’s overall personality is hugely influenced by a quality that we focus on.

8. Cognitive Dissonance

There are experiences in our lives when our beliefs and behaviors do not align with each other and we try to justify them in our minds. This is cognitive dissonance , which was studied in an experiment by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith back in 1959.

In this experiment, participants had to go through a series of boring and repetitive tasks, such as spending an hour turning pegs in a wooden knob. After completing the tasks, they were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell the next participants that the tasks were extremely fun and enjoyable. Afterwards, participants were asked to rate the experiment. Those who were given $1 rated the experiment as more interesting and fun than those who received $20.

The results showed that those who received a smaller incentive to lie experienced cognitive dissonance — $1 wasn’t enough incentive for that one hour of painstakingly boring activity, so the participants had to justify that they had fun anyway.

Famous Case Studies in Psychology

9. little albert.

In 1920, behaviourist theorists John Watson and Rosalie Rayner experimented on a 9-month-old baby to test the effects of classical conditioning in instilling fear in humans.

This was such a controversial study that it gained popularity in psychology textbooks and syllabi because it is a classic example of unethical research studies done in the name of science.

In one of the experiments, Little Albert was presented with a harmless stimulus or object, a white rat, which he wasn’t scared of at first. But every time Little Albert would see the white rat, the researchers would play a scary sound of hammer and steel. After about 6 pairings, Little Albert learned to fear the rat even without the scary sound.

Little Albert developed signs of fear to different objects presented to him through classical conditioning . He even generalized his fear to other stimuli not present in the course of the experiment.

10. Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage is such a celebrity in Psych 101 classes, even though the way he rose to popularity began with a tragic accident. He was a resident of Central Vermont and worked in the construction of a new railway line in the mid-1800s. One day, an explosive went off prematurely, sending a tamping iron straight into his face and through his brain.

Gage survived the accident, fortunately, something that is considered a feat even up to this day. He managed to find a job as a stagecoach after the accident. However, his family and friends reported that his personality changed so much that “he was no longer Gage” (Harlow, 1868).

New evidence on the case of Phineas Gage has since come to light, thanks to modern scientific studies and medical tests. However, there are still plenty of mysteries revolving around his brain damage and subsequent recovery.

11. Anna O.

Anna O., a social worker and feminist of German Jewish descent, was one of the first patients to receive psychoanalytic treatment.

Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim and she inspired much of Sigmund Freud’s works and books on psychoanalytic theory, although they hadn’t met in person. Their connection was through Joseph Breuer, Freud’s mentor when he was still starting his clinical practice.

Anna O. suffered from paralysis, personality changes, hallucinations, and rambling speech, but her doctors could not find the cause. Joseph Breuer was then called to her house for intervention and he performed psychoanalysis, also called the “talking cure”, on her.

Breuer would tell Anna O. to say anything that came to her mind, such as her thoughts, feelings, and childhood experiences. It was noted that her symptoms subsided by talking things out.

However, Breuer later referred Anna O. to the Bellevue Sanatorium, where she recovered and set out to be a renowned writer and advocate of women and children.

12. Patient HM

H.M., or Henry Gustav Molaison, was a severe amnesiac who had been the subject of countless psychological and neurological studies.

Henry was 27 when he underwent brain surgery to cure the epilepsy that he had been experiencing since childhood. In an unfortunate turn of events, he lost his memory because of the surgery and his brain also became unable to store long-term memories.

He was then regarded as someone living solely in the present, forgetting an experience as soon as it happened and only remembering bits and pieces of his past. Over the years, his amnesia and the structure of his brain had helped neuropsychologists learn more about cognitive functions .

Suzanne Corkin, a researcher, writer, and good friend of H.M., recently published a book about his life. Entitled Permanent Present Tense , this book is both a memoir and a case study following the struggles and joys of Henry Gustav Molaison.

13. Chris Sizemore

Chris Sizemore gained celebrity status in the psychology community when she was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder.

Sizemore has several alter egos, which included Eve Black, Eve White, and Jane. Various papers about her stated that these alter egos were formed as a coping mechanism against the traumatic experiences she underwent in her childhood.

Sizemore said that although she has succeeded in unifying her alter egos into one dominant personality, there were periods in the past experienced by only one of her alter egos. For example, her husband married her Eve White alter ego and not her.

Her story inspired her psychiatrists to write a book about her, entitled The Three Faces of Eve , which was then turned into a 1957 movie of the same title.

14. David Reimer

When David was just 8 months old, he lost his penis because of a botched circumcision operation.

Psychologist John Money then advised Reimer’s parents to raise him as a girl instead, naming him Brenda. His gender reassignment was supported by subsequent surgery and hormonal therapy.

Money described Reimer’s gender reassignment as a success, but problems started to arise as Reimer was growing up. His boyishness was not completely subdued by the hormonal therapy. When he was 14 years old, he learned about the secrets of his past and he underwent gender reassignment to become male again.

Reimer became an advocate for children undergoing the same difficult situation he had been. His life story ended when he was 38 as he took his own life.

15. Kim Peek

Kim Peek was the inspiration behind Rain Man , an Oscar-winning movie about an autistic savant character played by Dustin Hoffman.

The movie was released in 1988, a time when autism wasn’t widely known and acknowledged yet. So it was an eye-opener for many people who watched the film.

In reality, Kim Peek was a non-autistic savant. He was exceptionally intelligent despite the brain abnormalities he was born with. He was like a walking encyclopedia, knowledgeable about travel routes, US zip codes, historical facts, and classical music. He also read and memorized approximately 12,000 books in his lifetime.

This list of experiments and case studies in psychology is just the tip of the iceberg! There are still countless interesting psychology studies that you can explore if you want to learn more about human behavior and dynamics.

You can also conduct your own mini-experiment or participate in a study conducted in your school or neighborhood. Just remember that there are ethical standards to follow so as not to repeat the lasting physical and emotional harm done to Little Albert or the Stanford Prison Experiment participants.

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70 (9), 1–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093718

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63 (3), 575–582. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045925

Elliott, J., Yale University., WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), & PBS DVD (Firm). (2003). A class divided. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Films.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58 (2), 203–210. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041593

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Review , 30 , 4-17.

Latane, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10 (3), 215–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0026570

Mischel, W. (2014). The Marshmallow Test: Mastering self-control. Little, Brown and Co.

Thorndike, E. (1920) A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology , 4 , 25-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0071663

Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of experimental psychology , 3 (1), 1.

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Writing A Case Study

Case Study Examples

Brilliant Case Study Examples and Templates For Your Help

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A Complete Case Study Writing Guide With Examples

Simple Case Study Format for Students to Follow

Understand the Types of Case Study Here

It’s no surprise that writing a case study is one of the most challenging academic tasks for students. You’re definitely not alone here!

Most people don't realize that there are specific guidelines to follow when writing a case study. If you don't know where to start, it's easy to get overwhelmed and give up before you even begin.

Don't worry! Let us help you out!

We've collected over 25 free case study examples with solutions just for you. These samples with solutions will help you win over your panel and score high marks on your case studies.

So, what are you waiting for? Let's dive in and learn the secrets to writing a successful case study.

• 1. An Overview of Case Studies
• 2. Case Study Examples for Students
• 3. Business Case Study Examples
• 4. Medical Case Study Examples
• 5. Psychology Case Study Examples 
• 6. Sales Case Study Examples
• 7. Interview Case Study Examples
• 8. Marketing Case Study Examples
• 9. Tips to Write a Good Case Study

An Overview of Case Studies

A case study is a research method used to study a particular individual, group, or situation in depth. It involves analyzing and interpreting data from a variety of sources to gain insight into the subject being studied. 

Case studies are often used in psychology, business, and education to explore complicated problems and find solutions. They usually have detailed descriptions of the subject, background info, and an analysis of the main issues.

The goal of a case study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject. Typically, case studies can be divided into three parts, challenges, solutions, and results. 

Here is a case study sample PDF so you can have a clearer understanding of what a case study actually is:

Case Study Sample PDF

How to Write a Case Study Examples

Learn how to write a case study with the help of our comprehensive case study guide.

Case Study Examples for Students

Quite often, students are asked to present case studies in their academic journeys. The reason instructors assign case studies is for students to sharpen their critical analysis skills, understand how companies make profits, etc.

Below are some case study examples in research, suitable for students:

Case Study Example in Software Engineering

Qualitative Research Case Study Sample

Software Quality Assurance Case Study

Social Work Case Study Example

Ethical Case Study

Case Study Example PDF

These examples can guide you on how to structure and format your own case studies.

Struggling with formatting your case study? Check this case study format guide and perfect your document’s structure today.

Business Case Study Examples

A business case study examines a business’s specific challenge or goal and how it should be solved. Business case studies usually focus on several details related to the initial challenge and proposed solution. 

To help you out, here are some samples so you can create case studies that are related to businesses: 

Here are some more business case study examples:

Business Case Studies PDF

Business Case Studies Example

Typically, a business case study discovers one of your customer's stories and how you solved a problem for them. It allows your prospects to see how your solutions address their needs. 

Medical Case Study Examples

Medical case studies are an essential part of medical education. They help students to understand how to diagnose and treat patients. 

Here are some medical case study examples to help you.

Medical Case Study Example

Nursing Case Study Example

Want to understand the various types of case studies? Check out our types of case study blog to select the perfect type.

Psychology Case Study Examples 

Case studies are a great way of investigating individuals with psychological abnormalities. This is why it is a very common assignment in psychology courses. 

By examining all the aspects of your subject’s life, you discover the possible causes of exhibiting such behavior. 

For your help, here are some interesting psychology case study examples:

Psychology Case Study Example

Mental Health Case Study Example

Sales Case Study Examples

Case studies are important tools for sales teams’ performance improvement. By examining sales successes, teams can gain insights into effective strategies and create action plans to employ similar tactics.

By researching case studies of successful sales campaigns, sales teams can more accurately identify challenges and develop solutions.

Sales Case Study Example

Interview Case Study Examples

Interview case studies provide businesses with invaluable information. This data allows them to make informed decisions related to certain markets or subjects.

Interview Case Study Example

Marketing Case Study Examples

Marketing case studies are real-life stories that showcase how a business solves a problem. They typically discuss how a business achieves a goal using a specific marketing strategy or tactic.

They typically describe a challenge faced by a business, the solution implemented, and the results achieved.

This is a short sample marketing case study for you to get an idea of what an actual marketing case study looks like.

 Here are some more popular marketing studies that show how companies use case studies as a means of marketing and promotion:

“Chevrolet Discover the Unexpected” by Carol H. Williams

This case study explores Chevrolet's “ DTU Journalism Fellows ” program. The case study uses the initials “DTU” to generate interest and encourage readers to learn more. 

Multiple types of media, such as images and videos, are used to explain the challenges faced. The case study concludes with an overview of the achievements that were met.

Key points from the case study include:

• Using a well-known brand name in the title can create interest.
• Combining different media types, such as headings, images, and videos, can help engage readers and make the content more memorable.
• Providing a summary of the key achievements at the end of the case study can help readers better understand the project's impact.

“The Met” by Fantasy

“ The Met ” by Fantasy is a fictional redesign of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, created by the design studio Fantasy. The case study clearly and simply showcases the museum's website redesign.

The Met emphasizes the website’s features and interface by showcasing each section of the interface individually, allowing the readers to concentrate on the significant elements.

For those who prefer text, each feature includes an objective description. The case study also includes a “Contact Us” call-to-action at the bottom of the page, inviting visitors to contact the company.

Key points from this “The Met” include:

• Keeping the case study simple and clean can help readers focus on the most important aspects.
• Presenting the features and solutions with a visual showcase can be more effective than writing a lot of text.
• Including a clear call-to-action at the end of the case study can encourage visitors to contact the company for more information.

“Better Experiences for All” by Herman Miller

Herman Miller's minimalist approach to furniture design translates to their case study, “ Better Experiences for All ”, for a Dubai hospital. The page features a captivating video with closed-captioning and expandable text for accessibility.

The case study presents a wealth of information in a concise format, enabling users to grasp the complexities of the strategy with ease. It concludes with a client testimonial and a list of furniture items purchased from the brand.

Key points from the “Better Experiences” include:

• Make sure your case study is user-friendly by including accessibility features like closed captioning and expandable text.
• Include a list of products that were used in the project to guide potential customers.

“NetApp” by Evisort 

Evisort's case study on “ NetApp ” stands out for its informative and compelling approach. The study begins with a client-centric overview of NetApp, strategically directing attention to the client rather than the company or team involved.

The case study incorporates client quotes and explores NetApp’s challenges during COVID-19. Evisort showcases its value as a client partner by showing how its services supported NetApp through difficult times. 

• Provide an overview of the company in the client’s words, and put focus on the customer. 
• Highlight how your services can help clients during challenging times.
• Make your case study accessible by providing it in various formats.

“Red Sox Season Campaign,” by CTP Boston

The “ Red Sox Season Campaign ” showcases a perfect blend of different media, such as video, text, and images. Upon visiting the page, the video plays automatically, there are videos of Red Sox players, their images, and print ads that can be enlarged with a click.

The page features an intuitive design and invites viewers to appreciate CTP's well-rounded campaign for Boston's beloved baseball team. There’s also a CTA that prompts viewers to learn how CTP can create a similar campaign for their brand.

Some key points to take away from the “Red Sox Season Campaign”: 

• Including a variety of media such as video, images, and text can make your case study more engaging and compelling.
• Include a call-to-action at the end of your study that encourages viewers to take the next step towards becoming a customer or prospect.

“Airbnb + Zendesk” by Zendesk

The case study by Zendesk, titled “ Airbnb + Zendesk : Building a powerful solution together,” showcases a true partnership between Airbnb and Zendesk. 

The article begins with an intriguing opening statement, “Halfway around the globe is a place to stay with your name on it. At least for a weekend,” and uses stunning images of beautiful Airbnb locations to captivate readers.

Instead of solely highlighting Zendesk's product, the case study is crafted to tell a good story and highlight Airbnb's service in detail. This strategy makes the case study more authentic and relatable.

Some key points to take away from this case study are:

• Use client's offerings' images rather than just screenshots of your own product or service.
• To begin the case study, it is recommended to include a distinct CTA. For instance, Zendesk presents two alternatives, namely to initiate a trial or seek a solution.

“Influencer Marketing” by Trend and WarbyParker

The case study "Influencer Marketing" by Trend and Warby Parker highlights the potential of influencer content marketing, even when working with a limited budget. 

The “Wearing Warby” campaign involved influencers wearing Warby Parker glasses during their daily activities, providing a glimpse of the brand's products in use. 

This strategy enhanced the brand's relatability with influencers' followers. While not detailing specific tactics, the case study effectively illustrates the impact of third-person case studies in showcasing campaign results.

Key points to take away from this case study are:

• Influencer marketing can be effective even with a limited budget.
• Showcasing products being used in everyday life can make a brand more approachable and relatable.
• Third-person case studies can be useful in highlighting the success of a campaign.

Marketing Case Study Template

Marketing Case Study Example

Now that you have read multiple case study examples, hop on to our tips.

Tips to Write a Good Case Study

Here are some note-worthy tips to craft a winning case study 

• Define the purpose of the case study This will help you to focus on the most important aspects of the case. The case study objective helps to ensure that your finished product is concise and to the point.
• Choose a real-life example. One of the best ways to write a successful case study is to choose a real-life example. This will give your readers a chance to see how the concepts apply in a real-world setting.
• Keep it brief. This means that you should only include information that is directly relevant to your topic and avoid adding unnecessary details.
• Use strong evidence. To make your case study convincing, you will need to use strong evidence. This can include statistics, data from research studies, or quotes from experts in the field.
• Edit and proofread your work. Before you submit your case study, be sure to edit and proofread your work carefully. This will help to ensure that there are no errors and that your paper is clear and concise.

There you go!

We’re sure that now you have secrets to writing a great case study at your fingertips! This blog teaches the key guidelines of various case studies with samples. So grab your pen and start crafting a winning case study right away!

Having said that, we do understand that some of you might be having a hard time writing compelling case studies.

But worry not! Our expert case study writing service is here to take all your case-writing blues away! 

With 100% thorough research guaranteed, our online essay service can craft an amazing case study within 24 hours! 

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Dr. Barbara is a highly experienced writer and author who holds a Ph.D. degree in public health from an Ivy League school. She has worked in the medical field for many years, conducting extensive research on various health topics. Her writing has been featured in several top-tier publications.

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Psychology’s 10 Greatest Case Studies – Digested

These ten characters have all had a huge influence on psychology and their stories continue to intrigue each new generation of students.

27 November 2015

By Christian Jarrett

These ten characters have all had a huge influence on psychology and their stories continue to intrigue each new generation of students. What's particularly fascinating is that many of their stories continue to evolve – new evidence comes to light, or new technologies are brought to bear, changing how the cases are interpreted and understood. What many of these 10 also have in common is that they speak to some of the perennial debates in psychology, about personality and identity, nature and nurture, and the links between mind and body.

Phineas Gage

One day in 1848 in Central Vermont, Phineas Gage was tamping explosives into the ground to prepare the way for a new railway line when he had a terrible accident. The detonation went off prematurely, and his tamping iron shot into his face, through his brain, and out the top of his head. Remarkably Gage survived, although his friends and family reportedly felt he was changed so profoundly (becoming listless and aggressive) that "he was no longer Gage."

There the story used to rest – a classic example of frontal brain damage affecting personality. However, recent years have seen  a drastic reevaluation  of Gage's story in light of new evidence. It's now believed that he underwent significant rehabilitation and in fact began work as a horse carriage driver in Chile. A  simulation of his injuries  suggested much of his right frontal cortex was likely spared, and  photographic evidence  has been unearthed showing a post-accident dapper Gage. Not that you'll find this revised account in many psychology textbooks:  a recent analysis  showed that few of them have kept up to date with the new evidence.

See also Jim Horne's ' Blasts from the past ', looking back at similar accounts from the era.

Henry Gustav Molaison (known for years as H.M. in the literature to protect his privacy), who died in 2008, developed severe amnesia at age 27 after undergoing brain surgery as a form of treatment for the epilepsy he'd suffered since childhood. He was subsequently the focus of study by over 100 psychologists and neuroscientists and he's been mentioned in over 12,000 journal articles! Molaison's surgery involved the removal of large parts of the hippocampus on both sides of his brain and the result was that he was almost entirely unable to store any new information in long-term memory (there were some exceptions – for example, after 1963 he was aware that a US president had been assassinated in Dallas). The extremity of Molaison's deficits was a surprise to experts of the day because many of them believed that memory was distributed throughout the cerebral cortex.

Today, Molaison's legacy lives on: his brain was carefully sliced and preserved and turned into a 3D digital atlas and his life story is reportedly due to be turned into a feature film based on the book researcher Suzanne Corkin wrote about him:  Permanent Present Tense, The Man With No Memory and What He Taught The World .

See also 'Understanding amnesia - Is it time to forget H.M.?'

Victor Leborgne (nickname "Tan")

The fact that, in most people, language function is served predominantly by the left frontal cortex has today almost become common knowledge, at least among psych students. However, back in the early 19th century, the consensus view was that language function (like memory, see entry for H.M.) was distributed through the brain. An 19th century patient who helped change that was Victor Leborgne, a Frenchman who was nicknamed "Tan" because that was the only sound he could utter (besides the expletive phrase "sacre nom de Dieu").

In 1861, aged 51, Leborgne was referred to the renowned neurologist Paul Broca, but died soon after. Broca examined Leborgne's brain and noticed a lesion in his left frontal lobe – a segment of tissue now known as Broca's area. Given Leborgne's impaired speech but intact comprehension, Broca concluded that this area of the brain was responsible for speech production and he set about persuading his peers of this fact – now recognised as a key moment in psychology's history.

For decades little was known about Leborgne, besides his important contribution to science. However, in a paper published in 2013, Cezary Domanski at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Poland uncovered new biographical details, including the possibility that Leborgne muttered the word "Tan" because his birthplace of Moret, home to several tanneries.

See also ' Glimpsed at last ', and ' Using brain imaging to re-evaluate psychology's three most famous cases '.

Wild Boy of Aveyron

The "Wild boy of Aveyron" – named Victor by the physician Jean-Marc Itard – was found emerging from Aveyron forest in South West France in 1800, aged 11 or 12, where's it's thought he had been living in the wild for several years. For psychologists and philosophers, Victor became a kind of "natural experiment" into the question of nature and nurture. How would he be affected by the lack of human input early in his life?

Those who hoped Victor would support the notion of the "noble savage" uncorrupted by modern civilisation were largely disappointed: the boy was dirty and dishevelled, defecated where he stood and apparently motivated largely by hunger. Victor acquired celebrity status after he was transported to Paris and Itard began a mission to teach and socialise the "feral child". This programme met with mixed success: Victor never learned to speak fluently, but he dressed, learned civil toilet habits, could write a few letters and acquired some very basic language comprehension. Autism expert Uta Frith believes Victor may have been abandoned because he was autistic, but she acknowledges we will never know the truth of his background.

Victor's story inspired the 2004 novel  The Wild Boy  and was dramatised in the 1970 French film  The Wild Child .

Listen to an episode of 'The Mind Changers'.

Nicknamed 'Kim-puter' by his friends, Peek who died in 2010 aged 58, was the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's autistic savant character in the multi-Oscar-winning film  Rain Man . Before that movie, which was released in 1988, few people had heard of autism, so Peek via the film can be credited with helping to raise the profile of the condition.

Arguably though, the film also helped spread the popular misconception that giftedness is a hallmark of autism (in one notable scene, Hoffman's character deduces in an instant the precise number of cocktail sticks – 246 – that a waitress drops on the floor). Peek himself was actually a non-autistic savant, born with brain abnormalities including a malformed cerebellum and an absent corpus callosum (the massive bundle of tissue that usually connects the two hemispheres). His savant skills were astonishing and included calendar calculation, as well as an encyclopaedic knowledge of history, literature, classical music, US zip codes and travel routes. It was estimated that he read more than 12,000 books in his life time, all of them committed to flawless memory. Although outgoing and sociable, Peek had coordination problems and struggled with abstract or conceptual thinking.

"Anna O." is the pseudonym for Bertha Pappenheim, a pioneering German Jewish feminist and social worker who died in 1936 aged 77. As Anna O. she is known as one of the first ever patients to undergo psychoanalysis and her case inspired much of Freud's thinking on mental illness. Pappenheim first came to the attention of another psychoanalyst, Joseph Breuer, in 1880 when he was called to her house in Vienna where she was lying in bed, almost entirely paralysed. Her other symptoms include hallucinations, personality changes and rambling speech, but doctors could find no physical cause.

For 18 months, Breuer visited her almost daily and talked to her about her thoughts and feelings, including her grief for her father, and the more she talked, the more her symptoms seemed to fade – this was apparently one of the first ever instances of psychoanalysis or "the talking cure", although the degree of Breuer's success has been disputed and some historians allege that Pappenheim did have an organic illness, such as epilepsy.

Although Freud never met Pappenheim, he wrote about her case, including the notion that she had a hysterical pregnancy, although this too is disputed. The latter part of Pappenheim's life in Germany post 1888 is as remarkable as her time as Anna O. She became a prolific writer and social pioneer, including authoring stories, plays, and translating seminal texts, and she founded social clubs for Jewish women, worked in orphanages and founded the German Federation of Jewish Women.

Kitty Genovese

Sadly, it is not really Kitty Genovese the person who has become one of psychology's classic case studies, but rather the terrible fate that befell her. In 1964 in New York, Genovese was returning home from her job as a bar maid when she was attacked and eventually murdered by Winston Mosely. What made this tragedy so influential to psychology was that it inspired research into what became known as the Bystander Phenomenon – the now well-established finding that our sense of individual responsibility is diluted by the presence of other people. According to folklore, 38 people watched Genovese's demise yet not one of them did anything to help, apparently a terrible real life instance of the Bystander Effect.

However, the story doesn't end there because historians have since established  the reality was much more complicated  – at least two people did try to summon help, and actually there was only one witness the second and fatal attack. While the main principle of the Bystander Effect has stood the test of time, modern psychology's understanding of the way it works has become a lot more nuanced. For example, there's evidence that in some situations people are more likely to act when they're part of a larger group, such as when they and the other group members all belong to the same social category (such as all being women) as the victim.

See also another angle , on false confessions.

Little Albert

"Little Albert" was the nickname that the pioneering behaviourist psychologist John Watson gave to an 11-month-old baby, in whom, with his colleague and future wife Rosalind Rayner, he deliberately attempted to instill certain fears through a process of conditioning. The research, which was of dubious scientific quality, was conducted in 1920 and has become notorious for being so unethical (such a procedure would never be given approval in modern university settings).

Interest in Little Albert has reignited in recent years as an academic quarrel has erupted over his true identity. A group led by Hall Beck at Appalachian University announced in 2011 that they thought Little Albert was actually Douglas Merritte, the son of a wet nurse at John Hopkins University where Watson and Rayner were based. According to this sad account, Little Albert was neurologically impaired, compounding the unethical nature of the Watson/Rayner research, and he died aged six of  hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain).

However, this account was challenged by a different group of scholars led by Russell Powell at MacEwan University in 2014. They established that Little Albert was more likely William A Barger (recorded in his medical file as Albert Barger), the son of a different wet nurse. Earlier this year, textbook writer Richard Griggs weighed up all the evidence and concluded that the Barger story is the more credible, which would mean that Little Albert in fact died 2007 aged 87.

Chris Sizemore

Chris Costner Sizemore is one of the most famous patients to be given the controversial diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, known today as dissociative identity disorder. Sizemore's alter egos apparently included Eve White, Eve Black, Jane and many others. By some accounts, Sizemore expressed these personalities as a coping mechanism in the face of traumas she experienced in childhood, including seeing her mother badly injured and a man sawn in half at a lumber mill.

In recent years, Sizemore has described how her alter egos have been combined into one united personality for many decades, but she still sees different aspects of her past as belonging to her different personalities. For example, she has stated that her husband was married to Eve White (not her), and that Eve White is the mother of her first daughter. Her story was turned into a movie in 1957 called  The Three Faces of Eve  (based on a book of the same name written by her psychiatrists). Joanne Woodward won the best actress Oscar for portraying Sizemore and her various personalities in this film. Sizemore published her autobiography in 1977 called  I'm Eve . In 2009, she appeared on the BBC's  Hard Talk  interview show.

David Reimer

One of the most famous patients in psychology, Reimer lost his penis in a botched circumcision operation when he was just 8 months old. His parents were subsequently advised by psychologist John Money to raise Reimer as a girl, "Brenda", and for him to undergo further surgery and hormone treatment to assist his gender reassignment. Money initially described the experiment (no one had tried anything like this before) as a huge success that appeared to support his belief in the important role of socialisation, rather than innate factors, in children's gender identity.

In fact, the reassignment was seriously problematic and Reimer's boyishness was never far beneath the surface. When he was aged 14, Reimer was told the truth about his past and set about reversing the gender reassignment process to become male again. He later campaigned against other children with genital injuries being gender reassigned in the way that he had been. His story was turned into the book  As Nature Made Him, The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl  by John Colapinto, and he is the subject of two BBC Horizon documentaries. Tragically, Reimer took his own life in 2004, aged just 38.

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Case Studies

Last updated 22 Mar 2021

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Case studies are very detailed investigations of an individual or small group of people, usually regarding an unusual phenomenon or biographical event of interest to a research field. Due to a small sample, the case study can conduct an in-depth analysis of the individual/group.

Evaluation of case studies:

- Case studies create opportunities for a rich yield of data, and the depth of analysis can in turn bring high levels of validity (i.e. providing an accurate and exhaustive measure of what the study is hoping to measure).

- Studying abnormal psychology can give insight into how something works when it is functioning correctly, such as brain damage on memory (e.g. the case study of patient KF, whose short-term memory was impaired following a motorcycle accident but left his long-term memory intact, suggesting there might be separate physical stores in the brain for short and long-term memory).

- The detail collected on a single case may lead to interesting findings that conflict with current theories, and stimulate new paths for research.

- There is little control over a number of variables involved in a case study, so it is difficult to confidently establish any causal relationships between variables.

- Case studies are unusual by nature, so will have poor reliability as replicating them exactly will be unlikely.

- Due to the small sample size, it is unlikely that findings from a case study alone can be generalised to a whole population.

- The case study’s researcher may become so involved with the study that they exhibit bias in their interpretation and presentation of the data, making it challenging to distinguish what is truly objective/factual.

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Everything You Need To Know About Writing A Psychology Case Study

Writing a psychology case study can seem to be an onerous task. Not only do you have to worry about the quality of your writing, but also the various sources, types, diagnosis and theoretical approaches as well. But never fear – as here is our step by step guide to help you understand exactly what is necessary.

Quick Navigation through the Psychology Case Study Outline Page

What is a psychology case study.

• Psychology Case Study Free Sample

Tips for Making More Accurate Diagnosis

Sources for a psychology case study, how we can help, theoretical approaches, types of psychology case study, psychology case study: strength and limitations.

In most cases, a psychology case study focuses on one individual.  However, there are also times when it can be necessary to include multiple cases.  In the case of undergraduate study, it is very common for case study writing to center around a character from a book or a film – for example, the character Hannibal Lecter.

By analyzing and discussing all aspects of your subject’s life, behavior, thought processes and history, it is possible to discover any patterns and possible causes as to why they exhibit the morals, rituals and other aspects that deviate from what is considered accepted behavior.

Throughout history psychological case studies have been accepted as the most accurate way of investigating individuals who show psychiatric and psychological abnormalities that deviate from what we consider being ‘normal’ human behavior.  Looking back at, probably, the most famous of all examples – Freud’s work and theories that we still use to this day were very much developed via his use of in-depth case studies.

How we can help

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Psychology Case Study Free Sample (Click image to enlarge)

•  Remember that every type of medical case study will not only focus on one set of symptoms.  The human psyche is huge and complex subject, and before you begin to formulate any diagnosis it will be necessary to study the complete case file, and understand how the different symptoms portrayed all interlink for that particular study.  This is extremely important, because all quality case study writing only comes to diagnosis after analyzing all the facts.

• The nature of this kind of study means that your subjects might not always tell the truth.  Failure to spot this can result in false diagnosis.  However, lies in themselves are a powerful diagnostic tool, and you will need to develop a healthy skepticism to be able to understand the underlying information these untruths can provide.

• Use all possible information to formulate your diagnosis.  This should include the case history, patient interview/s along with any relevant information you can find in books or on the Internet.

•  Finally, you not only need to acknowledge any symptoms that are consistent throughout the study, but also note any inconsistencies.  These can be used to add weight to your final diagnosis.

What is important to understand about how to write a case study of this type, is that the study itself is not a research method.  The case study is literally the result of bringing together of all the information necessary to come to diagnosis. In order to produce a psychology case study that is as in-depth and accurate as possible, first you should gather a comprehensive profile.  The information you’ll need to collect will include:

– Official records. This should include any accessible records such as employment, school and medical records, along with any test results that may have been carried out.

– Any personal notes they might have written such as a diary or letters, photographs and official documentation such as their clinical notes and other professional appraisal reports.

– One of the most effective methods of finding out more about your study is the interview .  Along with a direct interview, also consider speaking to the person’s family, friends, work colleagues, teachers, employers and anybody who knows the person well.  Plan your questions in advance, and try to use open questions, rather than closed or rhetorical ones.  This way it allows the answers you receive to give you a genuine insight into the person, rather than hearing anything that you may have already pre-conceived about them.

– Observation. Watching the person – when they are unaware of scrutiny – is an excellent way of gaining a psychological profile.  This can be performed by an individual, but it is more common for direct observation to take place by a group of people.

If you gather your information that way, it will give credence to your eventual diagnosis.

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Once you have covered all the background for your case study – the background, description and diagnosis, it is necessary to move onto various interventions that could be used to help the person.

This analysis can be made using different theoretical approaches.  You might be instructed to use just one of the theoretical approaches, or you might need to examine and analyze the benefits of multiple approaches.  You should take into account the type of case study you’re writing.  For instance, a schizophrenia case study may benefit from different theories than other studies of a different psychological cause.

The following are the commonly known and used theoretical approaches to producing various interventions that can be used to treat the patient.

•           Humanistic approach

This approach emphasizes the study of the person as a whole. Therefore the study looks at the behavior of the person not only through the therapists (or case study writers) eyes, but also attempts to look at it through the eyes of the case study subject as well. By determining the patients feelings and self-image, a treatment plan can be evolved and put into place.

•           Cognitive-behavioral approach

This approach is very often used by therapists who treat patients with disorders such as mood and eating disorders, along with other conditions such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. It will be necessary to take into account the patients personal musings – such as diary entries, beliefs and how they react to various events and interaction with others in order to find the best approach to treatment.

•           Psychoanalytic approach

Freud championed this particular approach, which takes a look at how the unconscious mind has an influence on behavior, and how this can be used to determine appropriate treatment.

•           Interpretative phenomenological analysis

This theory has a focus on how your case study individual or group makes sense of a particular phenomenon or occurrence. It is likely that whatever this event is, that it will have high personal significance for the subject or subjects of your study.

•           Grounded theory

This method relies on first collecting the data about the subject or events, and from here integrates this into broad categories. Then an effort is made to find out the relationship between these categories – thus further understanding the issues and defining a treatment plan.

In general, a case study comes under one of two types; Prospective or retrospective.

Let’s take a look at the difference between the two.

• Prospective case study writing involves the observance of the client, or a group of people.  An example of a prospective case study might be to watch a group of people with a various disorder over a defined period of time (this could be weeks, months or even years).  By observing and documenting any changes, and the differences between the individuals, it will be possible to see how the disorder progresses – and if there are any differences caused by age, sex, social standing, education etc.

•  In the case of a retrospective case study , your information comes from looking at documented cases – in other words, the historical information that is available.  Let’s take the same example – a particular disorder.  This disorder is the outcome, but you would then work backwards, defining any particular factors that might (or might not) have contributed to why these people contracted the problem in the first place.  If a person is born with some disorder, you could use hereditary factors to see if you could define any particular factors in the parents or grandparents that might have led to them being born with that particular condition.

Case study writing is an extremely valid tool, but it does have its limitations.  Some of the plus points are that they are very often used to explore new ground.  Because a case study is looking deeply into how various different factors intertwine to create an outcome, then can actively help therapists develop new ideas for treatment.  In particular, they are extremely useful for those who practice holistic approaches towards psychological cases.

However, a case study has an awful lot of room for the personal opinions of the researcher.  No two people will analyze the same information in exactly the same way – so because of this care must be taken to understand that it is possible for author bias to creep in.  And it should be appreciated that because each case study only deals with a particular event, it cannot be taken as a given that any conclusion drawn could apply to a seemingly similar case.

However, as long as these limitations are taken into account, case study writing can be an extremely effective method of research.

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Longitudinal studies of leadership development: a scoping review

• Open access
• Published: 30 August 2024

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• Felipe Senna Cotrim   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0008-9820-3434 1 &
• Jorge Filipe Da Silva Gomes   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0694-2229 1 , 2  

Although various reviews about leadership development (LD) have been published in recent years, no one has attempted to systematically review longitudinal LD studies, which is arguably the most appropriate way to study LD (Day,  Leadership Quarterly, 22 (3), 561–571, 2011). In this way, the focus of the present scoping review is to understand how true longitudinal LD studies have been investigated and what inconsistencies exist, primarily from a methodological perspective. Only business contexts and leadership-associated outcomes are considered. To achieve this, ample searches were performed in five online databases from 1900 to 2021 that returned 1023 articles after the removal of duplicates. Additionally, subject experts were consulted, reference lists of key studies were cross-checked, and handsearch of leading leadership journals was performed. A subsequent and rigorous inclusion process narrowed the sample down to 19 articles. The combined sample contains 2,776 participants (67% male) and 88 waves of data (average of 4.2). Evidence is mapped according to participants, setting, procedures, outcomes, analytical approach, and key findings. Despite many strengths, a lack of context diversity and qualitative designs are noticed. A thematic analysis indicates that LD authors are focused on measuring status, behavioral, and cognitive aspects. Implications for knowledge and future research paths are discussed.

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Introduction

Even though many literature reviews about leadership development (LD) have been published in recent years (e.g., Vogel, Reichard, Batistic, & Cerne, 2020; Lacerenza et al., 2017 ; Day et al., 2014 ), no one has attempted to systematically review longitudinal LD studies, let alone true longitudinal studies, which is arguably the most appropriate way to study LD (Day, 2011 ). True longitudinal is operationalized in the present study as research involving three or more phases of data collection (Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2010 ), since pretest-posttest designs can be limited when it comes to measuring change (Rogosa et al., 1982 ). In addition to the focus on studies using multiple waves of data, the particular interest here is in the underlying methodological choices of those studies. The goal is not only to map elements such as concepts, strategy, participants, settings, analytical approaches and tools, but also to make gaps and inconsistencies more evident in the hope of advancing the science of LD.

The current study relies on the assumption that longitudinal methods are the most appropriate way to study LD as the field was categorized as “inherently longitudinal” (Day, 2011 ). These arguments are partly motivated by the idea that the leader development process is an ongoing and lifelong journey (Day et al., 2009 ), which, in turn, indicates why cross-sectional methods would be less suited. By inspecting the term “leadership development”, it is noted that it refers not only to the science of leadership, but also the science of development, which is concerned with measuring change over time. The development side is underexplored, but the focus should be on both parts of the equation (Day et al., 2014 ). As Day ( 2024 ) recently puts it: “We need a separate field of leader and leadership development apart from the voluminous leadership literature because of the development component” (p. 213). Despite referring to leadership and development as a science above, it seems worth acknowledging that they can be seen as an art too (Ladkin & Taylor, 2010 ). The art of leadership is described by Springborg ( 2010 ) as staying present with one’s senses instead of quickly jumping to conclusions. This line of thinking suggests that practicing the art of leadership means relying on intuition, awareness, and feeling. This is potentially relevant as the complexity of the world cannot be completely understood from scientific operationalizations alone, arts-based practices relate differently with complexity, allowing novel ways of responding to it (Ladkin & Taylor, 2010 ).

Considering the preceding paragraphs, the present research question can be expressed as: how are true longitudinal studies of LD being investigated and what inconsistencies exist, primarily from a methodological perspective? To help answer this question, a scoping review was chosen, a type of systematic review that is most suitable when the goal is to map evidence and identify gaps in knowledge (Tricco et al., 2018 ), and not to understand the effectiveness of specific interventions, which is the job of a traditional systematic review (Munn et al., 2018 ). Researchers suggest that scoping reviews should be as comprehensive as possible (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ), thus the process of including articles involved searching multiple online databases, identifying gray literature, cross-checking reference lists of key studies, and handsearching leading leadership journals. Only articles written in English language were admitted. Significant time was spent building a subsequent search strategy and a pre-determined inclusion criteria was followed to arrive at the final sample. The search and inclusion process follows the procedures of the PRISMA statement, the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (Moher et al., 2009 ), and particularly the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) (Tricco et al., 2018 ).

Nineteen studies were further analyzed out of 1,236 identified. A large table (Table 1 ) is presented in the results section mapping the most important methodological information. As recommended (Tricco et al., 2018 ), a thematic analysis is conducted too, followed by a discussion about the emergent themes in longitudinal LD.

Literature review

Leader and leadership development.

Using 2,390 primary works and 78,178 secondary ones, a recent bibliometric review (Vogel et al., 2020 ) maps the LD field in two interesting ways: through a historiography and a co-citation analysis. Historiography indicates that LD originated in actual organizational challenges and needs around 1989 and then transitioned to theory building around 2004 pulled by authentic leadership development scholars. The co-citation analysis indicates that seminal theories in leadership, motivation and learning highly influenced the field, which, in turn, shifted its focus to developmental interventions and processes as well as theoretical frameworks and intra-person developmental efforts such as identity construction (Vogel et al., 2020 ). Still on a broader level, by reviewing 25 years of LD contributions, Day et al. ( 2014 ) explains why LD is young compared to the centenary field of leadership. The former is, by definition, interested in change (development), and the latter, for a significant time of history, has focused on traits, which are harder to change, though not impossible (Bleidorn et al., 2019 ).

Individuals have predisposed levels of leadership ability (Arvey et al., 2007 ) and researchers have been especially interested in intelligence (Judge et al., 2004 ) and personality (Judge et al., 2002 ). Even though genetics will always play a part, leadership training works even more than previously thought regarding reactions, learning, transfer, and actual results, as shown by a meta-analysis (Lacerenza et al., 2017 ).

Instead of training, McCall ( 2004 ) argues that experiences are at the heart of LD. The challenges associated with experiences is that it is not simple to offer the right experiences to the right executives and that they vary in developmental potential due to contextual circumstances and individual differences. Six years later, McCall ( 2010 ) reinforces his argument, suggesting that companies should bet on what is potentially the most powerful developer of leaders: experience. Within the scope of experiences, some scholars are making the case for “consciousness-raising experiences” in leadership development (Mirvis, 2008 ). They are designed for the mind and heart and characterized by the focus on self, others, and society. Another relevant and more common type of experience in life is education. Evidence from almost half a million students from 600 institutions highlights that leadership knowledge as well as opportunities for application of learned principles are related with an increase in leadership capacity upon conclusion of higher education (Johnson & Routon, 2024 ).

Experiences and trainings are naturally more focused on developing skills and competencies, but some authors understand that these sometimes loosely connected leadership skills should be integrated to a leader identity (Lord & Hall, 2005 ). Indeed, identity has become a more popular aspect of LD (Epitropaki et al., 2017 ) and empirical investigations claim that leader identity is associated with leader effectiveness (Day & Sin, 2011 ).

Day ( 2000 ) makes the important distinction between leader development (developing individuals) and leadership development (developing the collective). In the present work, the use of “LD” incorporates both leader and leadership development. Drawing on this idea, The Center for Creative Leadership defines leader development as “the expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes (Van Velsor et al., 2010 , p. 2)” and leadership development as “the expansion of a collective’s capacity to produce direction, alignment, and commitment (Van Velsor et al., 2010 , p. 20)”. Respecting these distinctions and contributions, Day and Dragoni ( 2015 ) review theoretical and practical arguments and suggest proximal and distal outcomes to indicate whether leadership is developing from an individual level and a team level. For instance, on the individual level, leadership self-efficacy and leader identity are proximal indicators while dynamic skills and meaning-making structures are distal. Regarding the team level, psychological safety and team learning are proximal indicators while collective leadership capacity are distal ones.

LD is also greatly associated with mentoring across publications, for instance, it increases leadership self-efficacy, which, in turn, predicts leader performance (Lester et al., 2011 ), and it also promotes the development of a leader identity (Muir, 2014 ). Interestingly, the effect of mentoring is not only beneficial to mentees in terms of developing (transformational) leadership, but also to mentors (Chun et al., 2012 ). Similarly, a recent study shows that mentors can develop their leader identity and self-efficacy as a result of a mentoring process (Ayoobzadeh & Boies, 2020 ). In the same vein, coaching has been established as an important LD topic (Day, 2000 ). A systematic review shows several methodological challenges associated with executive coaching, but list many evidence-based benefits of the practice in relation to the coachee (e.g. better leadership skills), the organization, and the coach (Athanasopoulou & Dopson, 2018 ).

Feedback seems to be another popular theme within the LD literature, especially 360-degree feedback (Atwater & Waldman, 1998 ), a practice associated with enhanced management competence in corporate environments (Bailey & Fletcher, 2002 ). Within an MBA context, peer feedback decreased self-ratings of leadership competence three and six months later, an effect that was stronger for women than men, suggesting that women align their self-ratings with peer ratings while men have a tendency to inflate their self-images (Mayo et al., 2012 ). Seifert and Yukl ( 2010 ) contribute to the literature by demonstrating that two feedback interventions enhance leader effectiveness compared to only one intervention. Even though a recent meta-analysis related the use of 360-degree feedback during leadership training to higher results compared to single-source feedback, it is also linked to lower levels of learning and transfer (Lacerenza et al., 2017 ). For example, receiving negative feedback from multiple sources could obstruct improvement because it may threaten one’s self-view. These results can be considered thought provoking given how 360 feedback is popular and sometimes taken for granted by organizations.

Longitudinal research

Despite some very early records of longitudinal research overviewing the history and the fundamentals of this methodology, Rajulton ( 2001 ) says that it was not until the 1920s that more significant longitudinal studies started to be found, allowing the science of development and growth to be advanced.

An early definition of longitudinal research is given by Baltes ( 1968 ), he contrasts longitudinal and cross-sectional research and defines the former as observing one sample at different measurement points (pp. 146–147). Ployhart and Vandenberg ( 2010 ) take a step back, they discern between the terms static and dynamic before attempting to define longitudinal research, they relate the former with cross-sectional methods and the latter with longitudinal ones. Similarly, Rajulton ( 2001 ) states that cross-sectional information is concerned with status, and longitudinal information deals with progress and change in status.

However, one interesting definition offered by Taris ( 2000 ) is that longitudinal research happens when “data are collected for the same set of research units for (but not necessarily at) two or more occasions, in principle allowing for intra-individual comparison across time” (pp. 1–2). Additionally, Ployhart and Vandenberg ( 2010 ) focus on the quantity of observations when they say that longitudinal research is “research emphasizing the study of change and containing at minimum three repeated observations (although more than three is better) on at least one of the substantive constructs of interest” (p. 97). Acknowledging the two previous definitions and its weaknesses, Wang et al. ( 2017 ) argue that longitudinal research is not necessarily focused on intra-individual analysis and cite examples where two waves of data collection is an appropriate procedure (e.g., prospective design), thus claiming an alternative definition: “longitudinal research is simply research where data are collected over a meaningful span of time” (p. 3).

Although definitions and tools seem to be improving in the past years, it was not always like this. Reflecting on the challenging past decades for the reliability of longitudinal research, particularly the 1960s and 1970s, Singer and Willett ( 2003 ) said that although scientists had always been fascinated with the study of change, it was only after the 1980s that the subject could be studied well due to new methodological tools and models developed.

Given the analytical problems at the time, Rogosa et al. ( 1982 ) clarifies misconceptions about measuring change, especially in terms of the pretest-posttest design, and encourage researchers to use multiple waves of data. They claim that “two waves of data are better than one, but not much better” (p. 744). Contrary to the thinking expressed in previous decades, Rogosa and Willett ( 1983 ) demonstrate the reliability of difference scores, which are typically used in two-wave designs, in the measurement of change for some cases (e.g., individual growth), though they do not claim the score to have high reliability in general.

Coming from an education and psychological perspective, Willett ( 1989 ) demonstrates that significant increases in the reliability of individual growth measures can be harnessed by incrementing data collection with a few additional waves of information beyond two. Aware of the methodological problems and the current conversation, Chan ( 1998 ) proposed an integrative approach to analyze change focused on the organizational context embodying longitudinal mean and covariance structures analysis (LMACS) and multiple indicator latent growth modeling (MLGM). He expressed his ideas in a less technical way, which facilitated the progress of the field.

Ployhart and Vandenberg ( 2010 ) raise key theoretical, methodological, and analytical questions when it comes to developing and evaluating longitudinal research in management. And using a panel discussion format, Wang et al. ( 2017 ) build on the same structure with the purpose of helping researchers make informed decisions in a non-technical way.

Longitudinal leadership development research

A pioneer initiative of longitudinal LD studies is the Management Progress Study (MPS) initiated by the Bell System (AT&T) in 1956 with the purpose of analyzing the growth, mostly in terms of status, of 422 men (Bray, 1964 ). Interesting follow ups were conducted after 8 and 20 years making this project one of the most popular field researches in management development (Day, 2011 ).

Attempting to longitudinally analyze a new generation of executives in 1977, A. Howard and D. Bray launched the Management Continuity Study (MCS). This ambitious project replicates many aspects of the MPS, but it also addresses weaknesses such as the lack of representation of women and different ethnicities (Howard & Bray, 1988 ). The MCS sample was used by many other longitudinal scholars to obtain stimulating insights, for instance, how successful male and female executives deal with power (Jacobs & McClelland, 1994 ), and the influence of college experiences on progress and performance (Howard, 1986 ).

In parallel with these two major longitudinal efforts, an Eastern perspective contributes significantly to the field of longitudinal LD. The Japanese Career Progress Study originated in 1972 is a sample of 85 male college graduates starting their careers at a leading Japanese department store chain who were followed up after 7 years (Wakabayashi & Graen, 1984 ) and 13 years (Wakabayashi et al., 1988 ) mostly in terms of promotion, salary, and performance. The multilevel and mixed-method approach with multiple waves of data revealed, in aggregation, that the organizational assessment of management potential of newcomers, the quality of exchange with superiors, and their early job performance predicted speed of promotion, total annual salary, and annual bonus on the seventh and thirteenth year of tenure. Wakabayashi et al. ( 1988 ), in a summarizing tone, state that the first three years of employment are critical when it comes to later career progress and leadership status up to 13 years.

After these pioneers, more LD longitudinal works started to emerge. Perhaps the biggest contribution to the area is the publication of a special issue in 2011 by the Leadership Quarterly . Authors of the referred issue promote important discussions and advance thought-provoking insights. In particular, the importance of true longitudinal studies, the ones involving three of more waves of data collection (Day, 2011 ), as well as the benefits of analyzing leadership through a long-lens approach (Murphy & Johnson, 2011 ). Specifically, the special issue explored childhood and adolescence factors. For instance, Gottfried et al. ( 2011 ) studied the motivational roots of leadership and found that children and teenagers with higher academic intrinsic motivation are more likely to want to lead as adults. Similarly, Guerin et al. ( 2011 ) found that adolescent extraversion predicts leadership potential over a decade later in adulthood with the relationship being fully mediated by adult social skills. Furthermore, the special issue explored family aspects in relation to LD. Oliver et al. ( 2011 ) are the first to connect family environment in childhood to adulthood leadership. Specifically, they found that a supportive and stimulating family atmosphere led to transformational leadership qualities in adulthood through positive self-concept. Li et al. ( 2011 ) detected that higher family socioeconomic status negatively influences leader advancement for females. The opposite was observed for males.

Apart from the larger longitudinal efforts mentioned above, many independent LD studies that rely on their own longitudinal samples contributed significantly to the field too. They vary greatly in settings and concepts, but some early important contributions seem to be Atwater et al.‘s ( 1999 ) demonstration that military leader emergence and leader effectiveness can be predicted by individual differences such as cognitive ability, physical fitness, and prior influence experience. Focused on the followers instead of the leaders, Dvir et al. ( 2002 ) suggest that transformational leadership training leads to followers’ development and performance. Also, executives’ competence, judged by self and others, significantly improves after multi-rater multi-source feedback (Bailey & Fletcher, 2002 ).

Other notable contributions involve the influence of self-regulation training on LD (Yeow & Martin, 2013 ), mentoring as a tool to develop not only the mentee (Lester et al., 2011 ), but also the mentor (Chun et al., 2012 ), and more unorthodox views such as dark personality traits and performance (Harms et al., 2011 ). However, some authors seem to be not only focused on behavioral, but also cognitive change (e.g., leader identity). Day and Sin ( 2011 ) claim that individuals with a strong leader identity are more effective across time. By using a university sample, Miscenko et al. ( 2017 ) propose that leader identity develops in a J-shaped pattern and that leader identity development is associated with leadership skills development. On the other hand, high-potential executives seem to develop leader identity in a linear and progressive way (Kragt & Day, 2020 ).

Methodology

Type of review and sources of evidence.

Despite being more widely seen, systematic reviews are best suited to approach specific questions addressing effectiveness, appropriateness, meaningfulness, and feasibility of particular interventions (Munn et al., 2018 ), and given this study’s broader research question, a scoping review was chosen. This method is usually defined as a mapping process (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ) or a system for synthesizing evidence (Levac et al., 2010 ). More recently, it was described as a “systematic way to map evidence on a topic and identify main concepts, theories, sources, and knowledge gaps” (Tricco et al., 2018 , p. 467). Despite the differences, both types of reviews are quite related, Moher et al. ( 2015 ) even see them as part of the same “family”.

The execution of each step of the current review was guided by the methodology initially laid out by Arksey and O’Malley ( 2005 ) and by the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and its corresponding checklist (Tricco et al., 2018 ). Following recommendations that a scoping review should be as comprehensive as possible (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ), different sources were used: (1) Online databases were searched (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus); (2) gray literature was identified (e.g., subject experts were consulted); (3) reference lists of key studies were cross-checked; and (4) handsearch of leading leadership journals was performed.

Search strategy for online databases: building search strings and identifying databases

Significant time was spent building the search strings for the present work as this is seen as a wise choice to improve search efficiency (Denyer & Tranfield, 2009 ). According to Arksey and O’Malley ( 2005 ) the process starts by having the research question in mind and identifying the key concepts that are present, in this case, longitudinal , leadership , and development . Based on this initial process, synonyms for each concept were identified. For instance, since the term “leadership” can be often substituted in the literature by management, executive, supervisory, and potentially others, these variations were added to the search string. Similarly, the term “development” can be substituted by training, program, intervention, and potentially others, thus these variations were incorporated as well.

In addition to identifying synonyms, this search strategy took into consideration some other concepts that seem to be highly associated with LD such as coaching, mentoring, and 360-feedback (Day, 2000 ). Hence, these terms plus their variations were incorporated. Finally, the search strategies and the specific keywords of past LD systematic reviews were screened (e.g. Collins & Holton, 2004 ; Lacerenza et al., 2017 ; Vogel et al., 2020 ) to verify any potential blind spots concerning the terms to be used here. In practical terms, seven different search strings were necessary to capture the process described. The first search string is completely detailed as follows and the remaining search strings are available in Appendix A .

Search 1: longitudinal AND (“leader* development” OR “manage* development” OR “executive development” OR “supervisory development” OR “team development” OR “human resource$ development”) .

The search strategy and the definition of keywords were verified by a professional librarian at ISEG – University of Lisbon. Feedback and other suggestions were given over a one-hour videocall in March of 2021.

One additional decision when it comes to the search strategy is identifying the databases to be used. Systematic review guidelines seem confident that authors must search more than one database (Liberati et al., 2009 ), others generally suggest that two or more are enough (Petticrew & Roberts, 2008 ), but little guidance is available for precisely deciding when to stop the searches, especially in the context of scoping reviews in social sciences instead of systematic reviews in medical sciences (e.g., Chilcott et al., 2003 ).

Considering this situation, searches started in a highly ambitious way in terms of quantity of databases and search restrictions (e.g., filters), and were iteratively pondered according to the reality of executing the work given the colossal volume of data for two authors with limited resources to go through. The described strategy seems aligned with both earlier (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ) and more recent recommendations (Peters et al., 2020 ) for authors writing scoping reviews as it is thought that comprehensiveness should be framed within the constraints of time and resources available to the authors. In this way, five databases were used: Web of Science, PsycARTICLES, Ebsco’s Business Source Complete, JSTOR, and Elsevier’s Scopus. The databases were mostly hand curated based on relevancy for LD. In other words, WoS has been extensively used by authors published in high-caliber leadership journals such as the Leadership Quarterly , and on some cases it is the only source of information (Vogel et al., 2020 ). PsycARTICLES seems unavoidable in psychological research, and it is found in most reviews at top-ranked journals interested in LD such as the Journal of Applied Psychology , for instance. Business Source Complete, Scopus, and JSTOR went through a similar curation process in addition to being well-known and comprehensive sources of information across social sciences disciplines.

Inclusion criteria

Three essential criteria served as pre-requisites for document inclusion in light of the research question.

Method: Is it a true longitudinal study (three or more waves of data) as opposed to a cross-sectional or a pretest-posttest one?

Context: Is the work approaching a business context? This study is interested in understanding longitudinal contributions to LD within a “business context”, which is an umbrella term created to incorporate for-profit and nonprofit companies, public organizations, and graduate students associated with management (e.g., MBA, executive education) or closely related areas (e.g., economics, organizational psychology). In this way, numerous LD studies involving sports, healthcare, and military contexts were naturally excluded from the final sample.

Concepts and measures: Is the study actually measuring change in terms of LD? Only results incorporating LD as a primary variable were considered. In this way, the authors were interested in analyzing leadership-related outcomes (e.g., leadership efficacy, leader identity), and not more distant concepts (e.g., job performance).

Only documents from 1900 until 2021 in English language were considered. Even though LD was not a formal research area in the early or mid-1900s, when the field “all years” is selected before a search in most databases, the range set by default starts in 1900. For clarification purposes, the earliest study analyzed in the present work dates to 1986.

On a more technical note, different filters according to the database at hand were used to refine the results (e.g., subject area, document type). As an example, the present research is not interested in LD in the sports space or document types such as editorials or reviews, thus filters were used to aid this refinement process. This whole procedure is consistent with the idea proposed by Levac et al. ( 2010 ) that the inclusion and exclusion criteria should be iterative and adapted based on the challenges identified.

Additional sources of information

Almost all the way through the screening execution, the authors of this study learned that scoping review researchers are encouraged to explore other sources of information apart from databases (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ; Peters et al., 2020 ). As a result, three à posteriori procedures were used to add evidence: (1) identifying gray literature through contacting subject experts, (2) cross-checking reference lists of important studies, and (3) handsearching key bibliographies and journals. Although the standard procedure for systematic reviews is to include articles from additional sources before the start of the screening process (Liberati et al., 2009 ), it is believed that the inverted execution does not threat the soundness of this work since adding and subtracting results before or after cannot affect the final sum and considering the iterative nature of scoping reviews (Levac et al., 2010 ). The only unfortunate implication observed was an extra load of work given the necessity to do an additional round of screening instead of screening all in once.

When it comes to consulting subject-matter experts, a list of a dozen high-level names was put together (e.g., D. Day, J. Antonakis, C. Lacerenza, L. Dragoni, R. Reichard) and the individual email outreach was executed in June of 2022. The email text to the list of authors included a brief personal introduction, the reason for contact and descriptions of the request, and a gratitude note for the impact of their work on this author’s academic journey.

Despite some prompt and friendly replies from high-caliber authors, including D. Day, who is considered a seminal scholar in LD, and also J. Antonakis, who was the chief editor of the Leadership Quarterly journal at the time of contact, no gray documents could have been added for multiple reasons varying from email bounces, no replies, replies from authors with no suggestions in mind, or irrelevant suggestions for this particular research question.

In addition to the step above, reference lists of key studies were cross-checked. First, pivotal review studies in LD (e.g., Day et al., 2014 ; Lacerenza et al., 2017 ) had their reference lists analyzed. Then, selected articles were further evaluated and selected based on screening of title, keywords, abstracts, and, ultimately, full-text analysis.

Finally, handsearching, a legitimate process in systematic literature reviews (Liberati et al., 2009 ), including scoping reviews (Tricco et al., 2018 ), was performed. Eight journals labeled “dominant” based on a co-citation analysis of LD (Vogel et al., 2020 ) were handsearched as an additional attempt to locate relevant evidence. The Academy of Management Review was part of this list, but naturally excluded from this process as no empirical works would have been found there, so the seven journals analyzed were Leadership Quarterly , Journal of Applied Psychology , Academy of Management Learning & Education , Personnel Psychology , Leadership , Journal of Organizational Behavior , and Journal of Management.

In terms of execution, central terms for the present research question (e.g., leadership development, longitudinal) were typed into the general search boxes of these journals and the list of results were scanned. Documents indicating good fit were further analyzed via screening of abstract and keywords, and full text. When searching the Leadership Quarterly journal, particular attention was devoted to a special issue published in 2011 centered on longitudinal leadership development studies (volume 22, issue 3). The handsearch process generated results as two articles that would not have been found otherwise were included in the sample for respecting the determined criteria (Cherniss et al., 2010 ; Dragoni et al., 2014 ).

Data charting process

Referred to as “data extraction” in systematic reviews, data charting (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ) is the process of extracting information from the sample in a scoping review. Even though any information can be charted in practice, researchers ideally should obtain pieces of information that help answer the research question (Levac et al., 2010 ). Given this ponderation and the research question at hand, a data charting framework was created to keep a consistent extraction standard across studies.

Nature of variables (e.g., quantitative, qualitative).

Research strategy (e.g., experiment, survey).

Participants (e.g., sample size, gender distribution).

Setting (e.g., industry, company information).

Intervention (e.g., program characteristics).

Research procedures (e.g., comparator, waves of data).

Outcome measures (e.g., variables, instruments).

Analytical approach (e.g., strategy, techniques).

Despite the primary focus on methodological choices of longitudinal LD studies, it was judged important to also chart the key findings of each study given the underlying motivation of the present research to contribute to the longitudinal LD field. A separate table (Table 2 ) was created to map this information. The data charting process took place with the assistance of Microsoft Excel.

Search results

Taking into consideration the search strategy and the inclusion criteria described previously, the WoS database returned 673 results. PsycARTICLES, in turn, retrieved 84 results. Next, Ebsco’s Business Source Complete returned 332 documents. JSTOR found 49 articles. Lastly, Elsevier’s Scopus retrieved 98 results. In total, 1236 documents were found. After removal of duplicates, a total of 1023 articles were screened given the determined criteria. The screening of titles, abstracts, and keywords removed 810 works, and screening the full text removed another 196 works, resulting in 17 included studies. À posteriori inclusion based on conversations with LD experts and handsearch of bibliographies and journals added another two documents, confirming a final sample of 19 articles. This whole process is illustrated by the flow chart below (Fig. 1 ).

PRISMA flowchart: Search and inclusion process

General characteristics

The table listing the 19 documents and some of their basic characteristics can be found in Appendix B . The works comprise different years, journals, countries, and authors. The first true longitudinal study of LD in a business context was published in 1986 by the Journal of Applied Psychology . One noticeable feature of the table found in Appendix B is the substantial 22-year gap in publications from 1988 to 2010. After 2010, on the other hand, researchers seem to have found more efficient ways to collect longitudinal data, and until 2021, on average 1.42 studies were published every year. Despite the progress, compared to past decades, the number is still quite modest given the importance of true longitudinal studies to the science of LD (Day, 2011 ).

In terms of outlets, eleven different journals represent the sample. The pioneer on the subject and methodology is clearly the Journal of Applied Psychology . The most dominant journal is the Leadership Quarterly with five publications. In terms of countries, the United States lead the list with twelve publications. The United Kingdom has five, Germany and Switzerland have one publication each. Professor D. Day contributes to four articles (2020, 2018, 2017, 2011), which is a considerable achievement given this highly selective sample. Moreover, G. Larson, C. Sandahl, and T. Soderhjelm contributed twice (2017, 2019). All other authors contributed once.

How true longitudinal LD studies have been conducted methodologically and what inconsistencies exist?

The research question is addressed following two recommended stages, a description of the characteristics and a thematic analysis (Levac et al., 2010 ). These two steps are assessed below.

Characteristics

Table 1 helps to address the research question of this study which is to evaluate how true longitudinal studies of LD are being investigated and what inconsistencies exist, primarily from a methodological perspective.

First, in terms of the nature of variables and strategy, the vast majority were quantitative (16), two studies utilized mixed methods, and only one used qualitative data (Andersson, 2010 ). This study’s criteria yielded a majority of experimental and survey strategies. However, archival data, narrative inquiry, observation, and action learning are represented as well.

Collectively, the studies form a sample of 2,776 participants. This number represents respondents that answered all longitudinal measures, thus drop-out participants, who have perhaps answered only the first measure and not the following ones, were not counted. In terms of sex, this combined sample is composed by 67% of males. The more recent studies seem to be more balanced in terms of gender though. In total, 88 waves of data were collected across all studies, resulting in an average of 4.2 waves per study. The maximum value observed is 13 waves of data (Middleton et al., 2019 ). The longest study lasted 20 years between first and last data collection (Howard, 1986 ) and the shortest study lasted 4 weeks (Quigley, 2013 ).

When it comes to the contextual settings, 6 publications researched one single company, 7 authors gathered participants from two or more companies, and 6 studies analyzed business students, mostly MBA students with work experience. The targeted companies, to cite only a few examples, were quite diverse, ranging from a large Australian corporation with more than 200,000 employees (Kragt & Day, 2020 ); to a museum leader development program with global participants (Middleton et al., 2019 ); to a multinational Indian-based IT company (Steele & Day, 2018 ); to middle managers of the headquarters of a regional grocery store chain in the United States. As for business students, the sample includes, among others, a top-ranked MBA program at a Spanish business school (Mayo et al., 2012 ); full-time MBA students at a large American university; and a graduate degree at a Dutch business school (Miscenko et al., 2017 ).

No form of intervention was found in 6 studies. The remaining 13 studies applied different LD trainings that varied in (1) length, ranging from 90 minutes to 145 hours; (2) content focus such as self-regulation, influence, feedback, team effectiveness; and (3) methods like lecture, role-play, discussion, readings, coaching.

By taking a look at the LD outcome measures, it is noticed that the two early studies of the sample, the ones that belong to the 1980s, were preoccupied with measuring some form of status, for instance career progress in terms of speed of promotion, and level of management achieved. After 2010, the focus of analysis changes from status to either cognitive outcomes (leader identity, self-perceived role knowledge) or behavioral outcomes (skills, competencies, efficacy). Established instruments and developed measures are both present.

Changing the conversation to the analytical approach of these works, it seems that it was not until 2011 that more appropriate procedures for longitudinal modelers started to emerge. This raises the question if more true longitudinal studies emerged because of more suitable tools available, or if these new tools were created given the importance to research human development in a longitudinal way.

Before 2011, the sample indicates the use of multiple regression equations, correlation analyses, ANOVAs, and ANCOVAs. After that year, an emergence and consolidation of more sophisticated methods is observed, like random coefficient modeling (RCM), latent growth model (LGM), multilevel modeling (MLM), hierarchical multivariate linear modeling (HMLM). In terms of the software tools used to execute these analyses, SPSS, R, HLM, NLME are highlighted.

Despite the present focus on methodologies, it was judged relevant to additionally chart the key findings of the studies included in this review. Table 2 maps this information chronologically by author.

Themes were driven by the concepts, or the objects of analysis being used by scholars and derived by examining the “LD outcome measure” column of Table 1 as well as the full study. Specifically, a summarized thematic analysis was performed (Braun & Clarke, 2006 ). Variables were grouped together based on similarity. For instance, self-confidence and leadership efficacy are measuring behavioral change, hence a category called “behavioral” was created. Following this line of thinking, variables such as leader identity and self-perceived role knowledge are measuring cognitive change, thus the category “cognitive”. The same process was applied for the status category. After this procedure, the quantity of studies in each category was simply counted. Some studies are measuring more than one dimension, as shown below in Fig. 2 .

Venn diagram of main themes identified by quantity of studies

As observed, most scholars are, not surprisingly, interested in researching behaviors, maybe because it is an inherent aspect of the organizational behavior field. The behavioral dimension is also the only one to intersect with the other two that emerged. Status outcomes were the primary variable for only two studies. And although no studies analyzed cognitive outcomes alone, researchers seem interested in understanding these factors as it greatly intersects with the behavior sphere. Lastly, only one true longitudinal study of LD measured all three categories (Kragt & Day, 2020 ). Table 3 provides more information based on these themes.

The themes reveal some interesting aspects. First, measuring status as a primary outcome is linked to older publications while the cognitive and behavioral dimensions are more recent concepts of interest. The status dimension is also associated with less waves of data but longer length of study in general. The opposite happens for studies focused on behavioral and cognitive aspects, they are characterized by collecting more waves of data in less time.

Even though the goal of this research is to analyze only business contexts, some diversity is observed in terms of specific setting (e.g., business schools, large companies, partnerships with consultancy firms), and location (e.g., USA, Europe, Australia, Japan, India). Except for India, no developing countries are observed, suggesting a potential research need.

In terms of strategies and interventions, conducting experiments is associated with the more recent studies. A lack is qualitative methods is also noticed. Additionally, the survey strategy is always present across the three themes. No standard regarding the type of intervention is detected, they are mostly trainings with slightly different areas of concentration.

The two studies focusing on status used more general analytic tools such as multiple regression and ANOVA analysis. More sophisticated tools are observed across the other two spheres and their intersections (e.g., LGM, RCM, HLM).

The evidence indicates that the longitudinal LD area is young with the vast majority of studies being published after 2010. The combined sample sums 2,776 participants (67% male) and 88 waves of data. Most of these studies are quantitative, and mostly surveys or experiments. The context, as expected, is very much managerial and composed mostly by large companies and business schools in developed countries. Regarding LD outcomes, three major themes were found, status (e.g., level of leadership attained), behavioral (e.g., leadership effectiveness), and cognitive (e.g., leader identity).

Scoping reviews have the power to map a field of knowledge making gaps more evident (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005 ). In this way, it is not difficult to notice that no developing countries are represented except from India, smaller companies are also not represented, and women are underrepresented as they compose one third of this review’s combined sample. Considering that leadership is highly contextual (Johns, 2006 ), it is understood that, if supported by insights originated from diverse contexts, the field could make significant progress in terms of bridging LD science and practice (Day et al., 2018 ).

Moreover, it is concerning to see almost no qualitative studies in this review. Despite the challenges associated with conducting longitudinal qualitative research in the social sciences (Thomson & Holland, 2003 ), this methodology has the potential to enrich the LD field with deeper insights. One promising path seems to be multiple perspective qualitative longitudinal interviews (MPQLI) (Vogl et al., 2018 ), a framework created to analyze related individuals (e.g., one’s peers, superiors, subordinates) and to deal with complex and voluminous data. Another hopeful avenue of research for LD is through the underdeveloped area of mixed methods longitudinal research (MMLR) (Vogl, 2023 ). The current study has been relying on the assumption that longitudinal designs are the most appropriate way to study LD (Day, 2011 ). Building on this and being more specific, MMLR may be even more appropriate to understand and explain LD given the complementary insights generated (Vogl, 2023 ). However, applying this type of methodology comes with a series of issues as well as high execution effort that need to be taken into consideration by future scholars (Plano Clark et al., 2015 ).

One additional issue associated with longitudinal research is deciding how many waves of data to collect and what is the ideal length of interval between measurement points (Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2010 ). In the present study, it is difficult to recognize any corresponding standard among the experimental studies. Some authors seem to be following the intervention’s length, for instance, Miscenko et al.‘s ( 2017 ) 7-week leadership program collected data at seven weekly time points, but the vast majority of studies do not offer explanations for the choices made. Even though most of these decisions are atheoretical and the ideal time interval is rarely known because it greatly depends on the phenomenon of interest, Wang et al. ( 2017 ) say this is a critical matter because it directly affects the change trajectory. Therefore, the science of longitudinal leadership research could benefit from more information about the decision rationale given the variables at hand. For example, for which kinds of leadership phenomena longer lengths are more valuable and vice versa? How many waves of data would be more suitable according to concept, levels of analysis, or research goals?

Regarding concepts, data shows that scholars are less interested in measuring status-related concepts (e.g., hierarchical level achieved), while behavioral variables are the most popular ones and cognitive variables can be considered emerging. Although each study naturally uses variables that are coherent with their research questions, the three dimensions presented earlier (Fig. 2 ) offer different and valuable perspectives to the development of leaders and leadership, so it is judged beneficial to cross dimensions whenever possible. For example, Kragt and Day ( 2020 ) is the only study that sheds light on status (e.g., promotion), behavior (e.g., managing stress), and cognitive aspects (e.g., leader identity).

As a summary, this paper contributes to theory in several ways. First, through mapping the methods being used to date; second, by identifying inconsistencies and gaps; third, by elaborating on ways in which the leadership field can advance; fourth, by understanding themes in terms of outcome variables; and lastly, through insights for management scholars and practitioners given the exclusive focus on business contexts.

Limitations

The present work is not immune to limitations, as no scientific work is. This study includes documents up to the year 2021, resulting in a three-year gap considering the submission date to this journal. Significant personal circumstances prevented the authors from pursuing publication earlier, so to mitigate this potential limitation, a modest cursory review is presented as described. Searching the Web of Science database from 2022 to 2024 using the seven search strings outlined in Appendix A , a list of 116 documents were gathered. Following the PRISMA-ScR framework (Tricco et al., 2018 ), records were screened (abstract and/or full text) based on the same pre-determined criteria described in the methodology section. Even though 12 records were closely assessed, only 2 peer-reviewed articles respected the parameters. They are identified below followed by a summarized discussion.

“How coaching interactions transform leader identity of young professionals over time” published in the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring by Hughes and Vaccaro ( 2024 ) was the first record identified. This qualitative exploration utilizing semi-structured interviews before, during and after the coaching experience highlights through narrative inquiry analysis how coaching that is grounded in identity transformation practices are an important mechanism for emerging leaders as they navigate high degrees of professional and personal change in their lives. Despite the small sample size (six coaches), the three-phase data collection can be considered rare in qualitative studies of leadership development, representing a strength.

“Perceived changes in leadership behavior during formal leadership education” published in Public Personnel Management by Sørensen et al. ( 2023 ) was the second record identified. This multilevel three-year study with 62 leaders and 860 respondents found that leadership education has a considerable effect on leadership behaviors when it comes to tasks, relations, and change. Among the highlighted insights is the interesting fact that subordinates rated change in leadership behavior significantly lower compared to superiors and peers.

In addition to the limitations presented so far, scoping reviewers are encouraged to initially conduct the data charting process with at least two scholars working independently (Levac et al., 2010 ) and this was not possible to accomplish in the present study. Although agreeing with the above-mentioned recommendation, it is believed that the findings are not threatened by not executing this step, as the main motivation for it seems to be saving time when it comes to including studies. Thus, the only drawback for the current research was making the data charting process longer than it could have been.

The attempts to include gray literature were restricted to contacting LD subject-experts, which is a valid and effective strategy (Petticrew & Roberts, 2008 ), but there are additional tactics that could potentially lead to a larger sample. One example would be searching online databases for theses and dissertations around the theme. Future studies are encouraged to address that.

The experience of conducting a scoping review was perceived as “too manual”. Despite the confidence in the present results, it is difficult to ensure the inexistence of minor oversights as the process involved multiple Excel documents with dozens of tabs and thousands of lines each. Using a software was unfortunately not an option for the present study, but researchers interested in scoping reviews should consider using one.

The focus of the current review was purposefully restricted to business contexts. Although this is beneficial to the present goal and to obtain more specific insights, it leads to low generalizability power. Including studies from other LD contexts such as healthcare, military, and sports, can offer a good opportunity to learn across disciplines and potentially identify synergies for the benefit of leadership research as a whole.

Future research

Regarding the limitations highlighted above, it is encouraged that LD scholars conducting scoping reviews to focus on working within larger teams of colleagues as some scoping review procedures can be quite lengthy depending on the protocol chosen (e.g., a truly extensive search, data charting). Most of the limitations identified above could have been solved by that. And referring again to how data could not be obtained past 2021 for this study, it is encouraged that researchers engaged with scoping reviews include the most up to date records whenever possible.

Despite the search comprehensiveness demonstrated here, the present sample is relatively small. So, even though it is unknown if a larger sample is possible to achieve given this study’s scope, scholars are still encouraged to try to include more articles. Specifically, through searching more than five online databases, trying to expand the search for gray literature, and, if possible, performing searches in languages in addition to English.

Changing the conversation from the methodology of scoping reviews to the actual methodological contents of the sample, one gap that is easily noticed is the lack of qualitative or mixed-method studies, therefore these designs are encouraged for an enhanced perspective of LD in business contexts. Qualitative research has been growing strong in management science due to the value of their rich insights (Bluhm et al., 2011 ) and it seems that the LD field has plenty of space to leverage this opportunity. This is not to say that more quantitative designs are not needed, but right now it seems that the field can significantly grow from qualitative and mixed-methods contributions.

For sponsored authors or authors with a higher budget and a more numerous team, it would be interesting to conduct a scoping review similar to this one but not restricted to the business context as insights from other fields like health sciences, sports, education, military can help advance the science of LD. It would finally be interesting for a future scoping review of LD to organize the research through levels of analysis, namely intraindividual change, group change, and organizational change.

Even though the most recent studies analyzed by this scoping review worked with more gender balanced samples, male participants are predominant overall, hence future research is encouraged to continue working with a balanced proportion of males and females. Alternatively, all-female samples could leverage new insights as no studies under the current criteria have explored this angle yet. Relatedly, the LD field could unlock novel contributions by going beyond sex in terms of demographic characteristics. For example, age, race, social class, and gender identity are potentially good opportunities to extend knowledge.

The present scoping review intended to understand how true longitudinal studies of LD are being researched and what inconsistencies exist, primarily from a methodological perspective. After a rigorous search process ranging from 1900 to 2021, evidence was extracted from 19 peer-reviewed articles set in business contexts and measuring LD change with at least three waves of data. The current study elucidates gaps, patterns, and inconsistencies in terms of many aspects including nature of data, research strategy, participants, waves of data, concepts, analytical techniques, and key findings. Some observed highlights include the pattern to measure behavioral concepts and the emergent interest in measuring cognitive concepts. The procedures of the most recent works are shorter in length and more numerous in waves of data, the opposite was true a few decades ago. More sophisticated analytical techniques have been used in recent years as the field understands LD as a developmental science and art. However, there is an overreliance on quantitative methods leading to a bright future for qualitative and mixed-methods longitudinal researchers. Given the historical gender imbalance in participants studied (combined sample is 67% male), balanced or all-female samples can lead to original insights.

Search strings used in the five online databases .

List of selected studies and basic details .

Data availability

The authors declare that the data is available upon request.

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Accepted : 12 August 2024

Published : 30 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06567-4

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