Idiographic and Nomothetic approaches

What is an idiographic approach?

Approach of research that focuses on the individual to understand behaviour rather than making general laws.

What is a nomothetic approach?

Study of large and varied groups of people to be able to make generalisations and develop universal principles and laws.

What type of data does the idiographic approach usually produce?

Qualitative

What type of studies does the idiographic approach use?

Case studies

What type of data does the nomothetic approach typically produce?

Quantitative - seeks to quantify human behaviour

What approach is more objective?

Nomothetic

Why is the idiographic approach more subjective?

It places a significance on experience being important rather than there being an underlying reason to be discovered and applied to everyone.

Strength of idiographic

• Contribution to nomothetic approach - case studies and qualitative research can complement and add to nomothetic research like HM which can also generate hypotheses for further study

Strength of both

• Both are scientific - nomothetic uses a scientific method and idiographic researchers use triangulation to compare and increase validity of research

Limitation of nomothetic

• Loss of individual - preoccupation of creating general laws and predictions results in a loss of understanding of individual experience which is important for creating personalised treatment (e.g. schizophrenia)

Limitation of idiographic

• Ungeneralisable - meaningful generalisations cannot be made and case studies tend to be unscientific, subjective and biased - does not have practical applications to understand human behaviour