3 Case study research design Flashcards
Six Misunderstandings about Case Studies
A case study is a specific qualitative method
General, theoretical knowledge is more valuable than concrete case knowledge
One cannot generalize based on an individual case
The case study is only useful in first stage of research process for generating hypothesis
Case studies are biased towards verification, and therefore only confirm the researcher’s preconceived notions
It is difficult to develop a general theory based on a specific case study
Case
A case connotes a delimited phenomenon, an entity observed, for example, at a single point in time or over a specific period of time, or at a single location.
This phenomenon can, for example, be an individual person or a specific group of people, a territorial or administrative unit, a culturally defined area, an event, a specific situation, a process, an organisation or institution, a physical or material object, or whatever. Typically, the case represents the phenomenon which we try to explain or understand.
A case may consist of any phenomenon, so long as it has identifiable boundaries and comprises the primary object of our interest. Note that these boundaries do not need to be spatial or temporal but can be based on any kind of distinction between phenomena.
Case study
A case study may be understood as an intensive study of a single case, but if you want to distinguish a specific case from the rest, then you implicitly also need to think about a broader set of cases. Otherwise, it’s impossible for the researcher to define what the case is actually a case of. From this population of cases, we then might select one or more cases. The more cases we select, the more it becomes difficult to investigate these cases intensively. If we have a lot of cases, we would not speak of a case study anymore, but rather speak of a cross-case study.
Case study or Cross-case study
The distinction between case study and cross-case study is a matter of degree: the fewer cases there are, and the more intensively they are studied, the more the name ‘case study’ is justified.
All empirical research may therefore be classified as either case study (comprising one or a few cases), or cross-case study (comprising many cases).
In addition to the term ‘case’, we also need to define a unit of observation or just observation. In a case study, we usually always have more than one observation. Each unit of observation can be described by several dimensions, each of which may be measured as a variable.
Case studies are typically interested in within-case variations, while cross-case studies are typically interested in cross-case variation.
Nine different criteria for selecting one or a few cases
We can select a - typical case - based on some general understanding of a phenomenon.
We can select - diverse cases - when we want to get a better picture of the variation along a relevant dimension.
Maybe, however, we believe that an extremely big tiny home is not that representative for the basic idea of the tiny home movement, and therefore we want to focus on the other extreme, namely, the very tiny home. As a more prototypical or paradigmatic case, that would then be an example of an - extreme case - selection.
The next selection method would be the - deviant case - method. Given the general understanding of a certain phenomenon, we might want to focus on a rather deviant or surprising or anomalous case.
Sometimes certain cases are not uncommon, and maybe also not that extreme, but nevertheless a very - influential case - in the development of a certain phenomenon.
Sometimes, we also talk of a - crucial case - study when the circumstances of our case make it possible to have very strong expectations about the outcome. Investigating such a crucial case can then be very revealing if our expectations are confirmed or disconfirmed.
- Pathway cases - are cases in which the causal effects of one factor can be isolated from other potential confounding factors. Especially when we are able to confirm a causal relation in a number of cases, but still have doubts about a specific detail in this causal process, we might want to identify such a pathway case. As such, it is actually a kind of special case in a larger cross-case analysis.
The - most-similar selection method - makes use of at least two cases, which are selected in such a way that they are similar in all respects, except with respect to the aspect of interest.
The other way around, we could also look for cases that are very different with respect to the conditions that could explain the outcome, but all more or less have the same outcome. This is the so-called - most-different case design -
