Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Yin)

Chapter 1

The more your questions seek to explain some present circumstance (e.g. "how" or "why" some social phenomenon works), the more that the case study method will be relevant. The method also is relevant the more that your questions require an extensive and "in-depth" description of some social phenomenon. (4)

Key Questions:

1. How do you define the "case" being studied?
2. How do you determine the relevant data to be collected?
3. What do you do with the data, once collected? (4)

...the rigorous and fair presentation of empirical data (5),

Many social scientists still deeply believe that case studies are only appropriate for the exploratory phase of an investigation, that surveys and histories are appropriate for the descriptive phase, and that experiments are the only way of doing explanatory or causal inquiries. This hierarchical view reinforces the idea that case studies are only a preliminary research method and cannot be used to describe or test propositions. (6)

Exploratory case studies

Explanatory case studies

Descriptive case studies (7-8)

Three conditions for a case study:

a. the type of research question being posed

b. the extent of control an investigator has over actual behavioral events

c. the degree of focus on contemporary as opposed to historical events

a. 

Exploratory: What? (e.g. What do undergraduate students participating in writing internships learn about writing?)

Explanatory: How and why questions are more explanatory...and likely to lead to the use of case studies (9) (e.g. How do undergraduate students acclimate to the new composing environment of an internship site?).

To summarize, the first and most important condition for differentiating among the various research methods is to classify the type of research question being asked. In general, "what" questions may be either exploratory (in which case, any of the methods could be used) or about prevalence (in which case surveys or the analysis of archival records would be favored). "How and "why" questions are likely to favor the use of case studies, experiments, or histories. (10)

...the form of the question can provide an important clue regarding the appropriate research method to be used. (10-11)

b. 

The case study is preferred in examining contemporary events, but when the relevant behaviors cannot be manipulated. (11)

Experiments are done when an investigator can manipulate behavior directly, precisely, and systematically. This can occur in a laboratory setting, in which an experiment may focus on one or two isolated variables (11)

The advantage of the case study, when:

A "how" or "why" question is being asked about:

• a contemporary set of events,
• over which the investigator has little or no control

Novices may think that the purpose of a literature review is to determine the answers about what is known on a topic; in contrast, experienced investigators review previous research to develop sharper and more insightful questions about the topic. (14)

Problems with Case Studies:

1. Lack of rigor (sloppily done).
2. A second common concern about case studies is that they provide little basis for scientific generalization.

The short answer is that case studies are generalizable to theoretical propositions and not to populations or universes. In this sense, the case study, like the experiment, does not represent a "sample," and in doing a case study, your goal will be to expand and generalize theories (analytic generalization) and not to enumerate frequencies (statistical generalization). (15)

Defining Case Studies

Another problem has been to confuse case studies with ethnographies or with participant-observation...(17)

A case study is an empirical inquiry that

• investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when 
• the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident. (18)

In other words, you would use the case study method because you wanted to understand a real-life phenomenon in depth, but such understanding encompassed important contextual conditions--because they were highly pertinent to your phenomenon of study. (18)

The case study inquiry

• copes with the technically distinctive situation in which there will be many more variables of interest than data points, and as one result
• relies on multiple sources of evidence, with data needing to converge in a triangulating fashion, and as another result 
• benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions to guide data collection and analysis (18)

Yes, case study research includes both single- and multiple-case studies. (19)

Case studies can cover multiple cases and then draw a single set of "cross-case" conclusions. (20)

Chapter 2

A research design is the logic that links the data to be collected (and the conclusions to be drawn) to the initial questions of study. (24)

collecting
analyzing
interpreting

Five Components of Research Design:

1. Study questions:

To identify questions, a helpful hint is to move in three stages:

• try to use the literature to narrow your interest to a key topic or two, not worrying about any specific research question
• examine closely--even dissect--a few key studies on your topic of interest. Identify the questions in those few studies and whether they conclude with new questions or loose ends for future research
• examine another set of studies on the same topic (28)

2. Study Propositions

The purpose of this study is to try to understand 1) the processes by which undergraduates students acclimate to workplaces and their attendant discursive practices and 2) what interns learn about professional writing during their internships. 

3. Study Unit(s) of Analysis

...in the classic cast study, a "case" may be an individual...In each situation an individual person is being studied, and the individual is the primary unit of analysis. Information about the relevant individual would be collected, and several such individuals or "cases" might be included in a multiple-case study. (29)

...each case study and unit of analysis either should be similar to those previously studied by others or should innovate in clear, operationally defined ways. In this manner, the previous literature also can become a guide for defining the case and unit of analysis. (33)

4. the logic linking the data to the propositions

5. the criteria for interpreting the findings (27)