The Pragmatic Case Study in Psychotherapy: A Mixed Methods Approach Informed by Psychology ’s Striving for Methodological Quality

AbstractAt least as far back as Plato and Aristotle, psychology began as a stepchild of philosophy. The establishment by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879 of the first formal psychological laboratory focused on studying psychophysiological phenomena was psychology ’s declaration of independence as a discipline. By positioning itself as the application of natural-science-based, empirical methods involving quantitative, group-based approaches to psychological topics, the discipline consolidated its independence and its societal status and clout. This paper fi rst summarizes these developments, to highlight the causes of psychology’s historical resistance to qualitative case studies, and to qualitative research generally. I then briefly review three movements that have stimulated psychology to slowly but surely embrace qualitative case study research, w ith the addition of complementary, quantitative data: the rise of postmodern philosophy, the related “cognitive revolution” in psychology, and the “mixed methods” model of research in the social sciences that synergistically combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The result of this e mbrace, in the context of psychology’s established science-oriented identity, has been for psychology to add quality-of-knowledge guidelines for elevating the yield of case study knowledge. This result is illustrated by three examples: Kazdin’s (J Consult Clin Psychol 49:183–192,1981) strategies for reducing threats to the validity of c...
Source: Clinical Social Work Journal - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research