ABSTRACT
This chapter describes three types of single-case studies, clinical, experimental, and systematic, and examines their potential contributions to psychotherapy research. Although a single case-study approach may provide valuable information for resolving some of the problems described previously, its contribution may be improved when we compare and contrast carefully selected cases and examine the generalizability of findings while also elucidating common core processes. Single-case studies that allow for the examination of the detailed unfolding of events across time in the context of the case as a whole represent one of the most pragmatic and practice-oriented forms of psychotherapy research. One of the ways in which single-case studies can be brought together is by constructing an electronic clinical database that organizes and assembles published single-case studies and then classifies them according to case-descriptive information. A metasynthesis of single-case studies, on the other hand, mainly works with aggregated accounts and interpretations of the primary researchers constructions.
