case-history

A sociological method analogous to medical case-histories, tracing the career of a phenomenon through one example or many, which enables comparative and longitudinal analysis. The extended history of a selected case may be one of a number in a case-study research project, providing an enormously detailed and substantiated account, with reference to some specific characteristic or experience. The most common type is the life-history of an individual which, despite its title, is necessarily selective, giving a post hoc account of the antecedents, causes, consequences, contextual factors, perceptions, and attitudes associated with some key feature of the person or their experience-such as the fact of their being an immigrant, criminal, or charismatic leader. By their nature, such case-histories give greater emphasis to personal characteristics than to structural factors, and to specific processes rather than general patterns. Case-histories sometimes take as their unit of study a group, organization, or community, and are thus closely allied to the case-study. A single case-history is often used to generate hypotheses for further study. Case-histories are also used extensively in psychiatry and social work , and in criminology and clinical psychology, employing the skills and methods of the respective disciplines.