ABSTRACT
The term idiographic comes from the Greek word 'idios' meaning private or personal and this demonstrates that an idiographic approach focuses on the individual nature of behaviour. The nomothetic approach will focus on the use of scientific methods that involve the possibility of showing cause and effect, such as experiments, and methods that allow for large numbers of people to be studied, such as surveys. The idiographic approach will focus on the use of methods that allow individuals to be studied, such as case studies, and methods that provide qualitative data that gives greater detail, such as unstructured interviews. The main benefit of the idiographic approach comes from the idea of being able to use a case history to understand the needs of a particular individual. The example of an idiographic approach does indeed fulfil the remit of idiographic as it is based on an individual case study.
