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,