Understanding Case Study Research

Small-scale Research with Meaning

Malcolm Tight

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781446273920, 9781446273913
• eBook ISBN: 9781526410078
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Written in an accessible and jargon-free style, this book provides a comprehensive, student-friendly guide to the nature and use of case study research.

Whether as part of a more substantial study or as the foundation for a self-contained smaller project, case studies provide viable and valuable alternatives to conducting large-scale research. Grounded in both theory and practice, this book sets out not only the key debates and ethical issues surrounding case study research, but also focuses specifically on the work of others and how you can understand, use, and write about secondary data as the basis for your own research project. With tips, examples, and extensive discussion of real-world case studies  from a variety of social science and other disciplines, Tight illustrates the kinds of research to which case studies can be applied. Topics include:

• Types of case studies
• Advantages and disadvantages to using case studies
• The meaning and value of case study research 
• The use of case studies in different disciplines and research designs

Whether you want to know how to access and use the case studies of others or understand the methods behind conducting your own case study research, this book will take you through every step of the process!

1 Introduction

Aims and Audience

This book provides a comprehensive guide to the nature and use of case study research. It is designed primarily for students – final-year undergraduate students, master’s students and beginning doctoral students – who are learning about research methods and/or undertaking small-scale research projects of their own, and who might be interested in undertaking case study research. It will also be useful, therefore, to academics involved in instructing and/or supervising such students, who may not all be as familiar with case study research as they might like to be.

The focus of the book is primarily on the social sciences, as this is both the subject area with which I am most familiar, and also the area in which case study is most commonly employed as a research design. However, as case study is widely used in many disciplines, the book also explores that varied usage, so it should be useful beyond the social sciences as well.

The book has been written in what you will hopefully find to be an accessible and relatively jargon-free style. In part this has been a deliberate strategy, as most things can be explained fairly simply and there is generally no need to use obscure language. In part it is also because this is the only way I know how to write. There is, though, some specialist language involved in case study and related research, so this has been used and explained as necessary.

The book takes as its central position that case studies are small-scale research with meaning. In other words, while it is clear that case studies are, by definition, limited or bounded in their scope, they nevertheless aim to produce valuable data and analyses which are of broader interest and usefulness. It is in this way that they have the potential to make significant contributions to our understanding.

We don’t, of course, all have the time, funding and access to undertake larger-scale research. However, much can be achieved through smaller-scale research projects such as case studies. The trick, then, is to make the small-scale research that we undertake both useful and meaningful. This book aims to assist you in doing that.

The Contents of the Book

In the succeeding chapters, you will find discussion of, and answers to, the following questions:

• What are case studies (see Chapter 2)?
• What kinds of case study are there (see Chapter 2)?
• How does case study compare to other research designs (see Chapters 3 and 6)?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of case study (see Chapter 3)?
• How can case study research be meaningful and valuable (see Chapter 4)?
• How are case studies used in different disciplines (see Chapter 5)?
• How are case studies used in combination with other research designs (see Chapter 6)?
• How can I access and use published case study research (see Chapter 7)?
• How do I carry out a case study (see Chapters 8 and 9)?
• What is the future for case study research (see Chapter 10)?

Each chapter begins with an outline of its contents, and ends with a summary of the main points made and a list of key readings. Boxes are used in some chapters to present examples or summarise material, and plentiful quotations from the extensive literature on case study research are provided.

One key feature of the book is its extensive discussion of selective case study publications: this is a particular feature of Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7. This has been done to better exemplify the kinds of research that case study designs have been used for, to show their potential, and to illustrate the kinds of conclusions that such research can come up with.

I hope you find the book both enjoyable and useful.

2 Origins and Applications of Case Study

Introduction

This chapter seeks to provide an overview of case study as a research design (i.e. a way of pursuing a particular research project; the status of case study is considered in more detail in Chapter 3). Its five main sections consider:

• what we mean by ‘case study’
• how case study has developed over time
• how it is interpreted and applied in different disciplines
• the different types of case study
• the relations between research case studies (the main focus of this book) and teaching case studies.

All of these issues are discussed further, and illustrated by the use of example case studies from a range of disciplines, in the remainder of the book.

What is a Case Study?

All research studies cases: instances or examples of particular things (e.g. people, animals, planets, companies, schools, works of art, elements, policies, ideas). This does not mean, however, that all research projects are case studies.

Much research takes an alternative approach, and focuses on specific and limited aspects of cases (commonly referred to as variables: e.g. people’s opinions, animals’ habits, planets’ orbits, companies’ balance sheets), measuring and exploring their variation, and relationships with other variables, for a given sample of cases. This is the more typical approach taken in scientific and/or quantitative research.

The term ‘case study’ is, or should be, reserved for a particular design of research, where the focus is on an in-depth study of one or a limited number of cases. In practice, however, its use is rather messier and more complex:

To refer to a work as a ‘case study’ might mean: (a) that its method is qualitative, small-N, (b) that the research is holistic, thick (a more or less comprehensive examination of a phenomenon), (c) that it utilizes a particular type of evidence (e.g. ethnographic, clinical, nonexperimental, non-survey-based, participant-observation, process-tracing, historical, textual or field research), (d) that its method of evidence gathering is naturalistic (a ‘real-life context’), (e) that the topic is diffuse (case and context are difficult to distinguish), (f) that it employs triangulation (‘multiple sources of evidence’), (g) that the research investigates the properties of a single observation, or (h) that the research investigates the properties of a single phenomenon, instance or example. (Gerring 2007, p. 17)

To compound matters further, Gerring (2007, p. 18) goes on to note that case study has a large number of variants or synonyms: ‘single unit, single subject, single case, N=1, case-based, case-control, case history, case method, case record, case work, within-case, clinical research’.

So what is a case study? Box 2.1 contains eleven definitions of case study, selected from among the many available in the literature, and organised by date. It illustrates both the development of our understanding of case study over time (the subject of the next section), and the similarities and differences in these understandings at any one time.

Box 2.1 Definitions of Case Study

A case study, basically, is a depiction either of a phase or the totality of relevant experience of some selected datum. (Foreman 1948, p. 408)

A case study is expected to catch the complexity of a single case… Case study is the study of the particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its activity within important circumstances. (Stake 1995, p. xi)

[T]he single most defining characteristic of case study research lies in delimiting the object of study, the case… If the phenomenon you are interested in studying is not intrinsically bounded, it is not a case. (Merriam 1998, p. 27)

An educational case study is an empirical enquiry which is: conducted within a localized boundary of space and time… into interesting aspects of an educational activity, or programme, or institution, or system; mainly in its natural context and within an ethic of respect for persons; in order to inform the judgements and decisions of practitioners or policy-makers; or of theoreticians who are working to these ends; in such a way that sufficient data are collected for the researcher to be able… to explore significant features of the case… create plausible interpretations… test for the[ir] trustworthiness… construct a worthwhile argument… [and] convey convincingly to an audience this argument. (Bassey 1999, p. 58, emphasis in original)

A case can be an individual; it can be a group – such as a family, or a class, or an office, or a hospital ward; it can be an institution – such as a school or a children’s home, or a factory; it can be a large-scale community – a town, an industry, a profession. All of these are single cases; but you can also study multiple cases: a number of single parents; several schools; two different professions. (Gillham 2000, p. 1, emphasis in original)

A case study is a research strategy that can be qualified as holistic in nature, following an iterative-parallel way of proceeding, looking at only a few strategically selected cases, observed in their natural context in an open-ended way, explicitly avoiding (all variants of) tunnel vision, making use of analytical comparison of cases or sub-cases, and aimed at description and explanation of complex and entangled group attributes, patterns, structures or processes. (Verschuren 2003, p. 137)

A ‘case study’… is best defined as an intensive study of a single unit with an aim to generalize across a larger set of units. (Gerring 2004, p. 341)

[C]ase study is a transparadigmatic and transdisciplinary heuristic that involves the careful delineation of the phenomena for which evidence is being collected. (VanWynsberghe and Khan 2007, p. 80)

A case study is a study in which (a) one case (single case study) or a small number of cases (comparative case study) in their real life context are selected, and (b) scores obtained from these cases are analysed in a qualitative manner. (Dul and Hak 2008, p. 4)

A case study refers to the study of a social phenomenon: carried out within the boundaries of one social system (the case), or within the boundaries of a few social systems (the cases)… in the case’s natural context… by monitoring the phenomenon during a certain period or, alternatively, by collecting information afterwards with respect to the development of the phenomenon during a certain period… in which the researcher focuses on process-tracing… where the researcher, guided by an initially broad research question, explores the data and only after some time formulates more precise research questions, keeping an open eye to unexpected aspects… using several data sources, the main ones being (in this order) available documents, interviews with informants and (participatory) observation. (Swanborn 2010, p. 13, emphasis in original)

Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions or other systems which are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame – an object – within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates. (Thomas 2011a, p. 23)

The first three definitions usefully focus on key elements of our common understanding of case study. Thus, Forem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Sidebar List
• Table List
• About the Author
• Part A What is a Case Study?
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Origins and Applications of Case Study
• 3 Key Debates in Case Study Research
• Part B Using Case Study
• 4 The Value of Case Study
• 5 The Use of Case Study in Different Disciplines
• 6 Case Studies in Mixed/Combined Research Designs
• 7 Learning from Case Study
• Part C Carrying Out a Case Study
• 8 Selection, Context and Theory in Case Study
• 9 Method, Analysis and Report in Case Study
• 10 Conclusion
• References
• Index