2. Outline
1. What is a case study?
2. What is a case?
3. Make a case
4. Problems with case studies
5. Exercise
6. A PhD case study experience
3. Various research types
• Eight main types of research:
– literature reviews, secondary analysis and
meta-analysis of existing data; qualitative
research; research based on administrative
records and documentary evidence; ad hoc
sample surveys; regular or continuous sample
surveys; case studies; longitudinal studies;
and experimental social research (Hakim,
1987)
4. Why the case studies?
• From the failures of:
– Quantitative evaluation studies in providing
findings that had strong explanatory power.
– Measures and indicators
• To provide:
– Clear findings, document success and failure
– To provide an understanding of process.
• Case-studies used to be looked down
upon, now we often just assume that’s
what social researchers ‘do’.
6. What is a Case Study?
• Case Studies, Case Histories, and Case
Records
• An approach to the production of knowledge
• NOT simply an example or an illustration
• It is a Methodology NOT a single Method
• It does not exclude or claim to replace other
methodologies
• It does have significant advantages for
social scientists
7. Rationale
• A ‘functioning specific’ with purposive
working parts within an integrated system
(Stake, 1994)
• Detailed and close examination of an
example or phenomena
• Aims to describe things as they are, not as
they might or could be
• Flexibility of addressing multiple
incidences
8. ‘Case study is not easily summarised as a single
coherent form of research. Rather it is an
“approach” to research which has been fed by
many different theoretical tributaries, some,
deriving from social science, stressing social
interaction and the social construction of
meaning in situ, others, deriving from medical or
even criminological models, giving far more
emphasis to the ‘objective’ observer, studying
‘the case’.’ (Stark and Torrance, 2004: 33)
10. What is a Case?
• A case is a container, a frame etc…
• Fundamentally about boundaries
• But boundaries can be: spatial, temporal,
processual or conceptual.
• But doesn’t necessarily say that
boundaries are the beginning, the process,
or the outcome!
• How do you systematise this apparent
infinite insanity?
• Can always reconsider your ‘casing’
11. Examples of ‘casing’
• Spatial – local- global
– e.g.: Saskia Sassen’s comparative study of the global
city status of New York, London and Tokyo
• Temporal – Emblematic moments
– e.g.: Peter Atkins on the removal of street barriers in
Victorian London.
• Processual →
– development and success or failure of a technology or
project)
• Conceptual
– e.g.: David Lyon on ‘the surveillance society’→
But it’s not that simple
12. A Conceptual Map of Cases
Conceptual Map for answers to ‘What is a
Case?’ (from Ragin and Becker, p.9)
13. 1. Cases are Found
• Cases are empirically real and bounded
• Cases are specific
• Empirical boundary-making essential to
research
• Discovered as part of process
e.g.: ‘community’; ‘rural development
network’ →
14. 2. Cases are Objects
• Cases are empirically real and bounded
• Cases are general and conventional
• Boundary-making is not important process
in research
• Use existing boundaries
e.g.: ‘nation-state’; ‘call-centre’
15. 3. Cases are Made
• Cases are theoretical constructs
• Emerge during specific research process
• Gradually imposed on data
• Theoretical significance precedes
empirical limits
• No necessary outcome or success
e.g.: ‘terrorism’; ‘tyranny’→
16. 4. Cases are Conventions
• Cases are theoretical constructs
• Products of collective or general
scholarship
• External to specific study
• Ways of organising social science
• Affected by academic fashion
e.g.: ‘industrial societies’; ‘global cities’→
18. Overlaps and Changes
• 4 types of Case are not incompatible
• Can combine them
• Can move from one to another during
research
• Can use one or more approaches in
parallel
• And of course, you might not have such a
choice in practice (sponsors etc.)…
19. Multiple Problems
• Little consistency in practice
• Little effort to link theoretical and empirical cases
amongst real researchers
• How can you compare different cases within
research or from different studies?
• Are variable-oriented investigations able to
address complexities?
• Can you make narrative approaches more
systematic?
• How do case-studies relate to their conventions?
• Problems of establishing causality from small-N
cases?
21. Flyvberg’s “5 Misunderstandings
about Case-Studies”
1. Theoretical knowledge is more valuable than
practical knowledge;
2. You cannot generalise from a single case,
therefore case-studies cannot contribute to
scientific development;
3. Case-studies are best for generating
hypotheses not for testing hypotheses or
building theory;
4. Case-studies are biased towards verification;
5. Case-studies are difficult to summarise.
22. 1. Theoretical and Practical
• Theoretical knowledge = context-
independent
• Practical knowledge = context-
dependent
• Two main points:
a. Learning as movement from rule-
discovery to expertise
b. Prediction and Social Inquiry
23. 1a. Developing Expertise
• Old idea of development of human knowledge =
discovery of rules (analytical rationality)
• BUT: discovery of rules is only a beginning
• Important thing is development of virtuosity →
(embodied skill) or expertise (recognised skill)
• Expertise can only develop through experience
of cases
• Important to understanding complex reality of
social worlds and researcher’s own skills
24. 1b. Prediction and Social Inquiry
• Social sciences used to try to imitate
natural sciences in producing
generalisable, predictable theory
• Have not succeeded, probably cannot? (At
least we don’t know the form of any such
theory)
• Can produce dense, context-dependent
knowledge
• Aim is learning not proof (heuristic).
25. So…
• Practical, contextual knowledge creates
virtuosity / expertise and is all we can
expect from social inquiry.
• Case Studies provide this.
26. 2. Generalisation and Science
• BUT: haven’t I just proved the second
misunderstanding to be correct after all?
• Well, you can see recurring patterns in
analysing multiple case-studies…
• However generalisation is possible from a
single case – even in science in practice.
• And can generalise about what is NOT
true (Karl Popper’s idea of falsifiability).
27. So…
• Formal generalisation is overestimated as
a means to scientific advance →
• ‘Force of example’ is underestimated
• Case-studies are ideal for falsifiability
28. 3. Hypotheses and Purpose
• Cases are useful at all stages of
research
• Falsifiability can be the concluding stage
of even conventional methodology
• What is vital is how a case is chosen and
why (it’s the casing, again…).
• 4 types of cases:
a. Extreme / deviant cases
b. Maximum variation cases
c. Critical cases
d. Paradigmatic Cases
29. a. Extreme / Deviant Cases
• A dramatic example, which can help
make a point
• e.g.: many of Freud’s case histories
• Indicate tendencies, boundaries,
falsifiability etc. →
30. b. Maximum Variation Cases
• To obtain information about particular
circumstances in case process and
outcomes
• Several similar cases with large variation
in one characteristic
• Have to be careful that don’t assume
these are like experiments – other
variations always exist (although
experiments are never quite what they
seem either…)
31. c. Critical Cases
• Cases which have a strategic importance to a
general problem
• Can conclude that if something is true in this
case, it is more likely to be true in others
• e.g.: Whyte’s late 1930s to early 1940s study
of ‘street corner’ society.
• Would expect social disorganisation, in fact
found a lot. If social organisation is present
even here, then more likely to be universal?
• Location of these cases requires experience /
expertise.
32. d. Paradigmatic Cases
• Highlight more general tendencies in society at
large
• e.g.: Foucault’s use of Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’
The Panopticon provides a key example of the
tendency to conceive of the person in a
particular way (as malleable individual) at a
particular time (the modern period) →
• How to choose? You can’t always…
• A paradigmatic case is often paradigmatic
because it becomes so.
• Needs to be widely agreed or accepted (or
even widely rejected!).
33. 4. Verification Bias
• Do case studies just tend to confirm researchers’
preconceived notions?
• They can…but so can any research
• Because of depth and closeness to real life,
case-studies are frequently more likely to
overturn preconceived notions (many examples
of this from field researchers)
• Case studies often do not have simple outcomes
• Case studies allow ‘objects’ of research to ‘talk
back’
• Produces more complex forms of understanding
because recognises research as learning
34. So…
• Case studies are no more subject to
verification bias than other methodologies
• Case studies in practice show a greater
sign of propensity of falsification of
preconceived ideas
• Case studies allow others to speak
35. 5. Summarising Case Studies
• Case studies are often strongly narrative-based
• But thick description is an advantage and demonstrates
ambiguities and problems that are real
• Summarising can destroy everything that is important
about a case study
• So use this as an advantage! Try to:
– Avoid god-like narrator tone and let actants speak
– Avoid closing down the possible implications by being too tied to
one theory or discipline
– make the reader think ‘what is this a case of?’ NEVER ‘so what?’
• The case is the result
• Understanding cases creates virtuosity / expertise
• e.g.: Wittgenstein on London – to understand the city
you travel in different ways, you don’t just use a map.
36. Ludwig Wittgenstein used the following metaphor describing his
use of the case-study approach in philosophy:
“In teaching you philosophy I’m like a guide showing you how
to find your way round London. I have to take you through the
city from north to south, from east to west, from Euston to the
embankment and from Piccadilly to the Marble Arch. After I
have taken you many journeys through the city, in all sorts of
directions, we shall have passed through any given street a
number of times— each time traversing the street as part of a
different journey. At the end of this you will know London; you
will be able to find your way about like a born Londoner. Of
course, a good guide will take you through the more important
streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad
guide will do the opposite.
In philosophy I’m a rather bad guide.” (Gasking and Jackson,
1967)
37. So…
• Case processes are often difficult to
summarise
• Case outcomes may or may not be
• Problems of summary are because of the
nature of reality not case-study
methodology
• Summary may not be desirable
• Good case studies should be read as
narratives in their entirety
38. How do you Compare Case Studies?
• Research Questions
– should think of them together
– case is a problematization of a question
• Controlling variables
– But remember: NOT a classical experiment
– Choosing cases which have similar
characteristic is all you are doing
• Avoiding assumptions
– Have to be open to change
39. Case study process
• Methods
– Qualitative, Quantitative, Mixed methods
• Obstacles
– social, financial, bureaucratic, and logistical
obstacles to be encountered before, during
and after the fieldwork
• Ethics
– Principles procedures vs. protocols
– Confidentiality on data/sources
• New technologies
46. Final Thoughts on Case-studies and
Method
• Case Studies to the generation of
virtuosity / expertise NOT specialism
• Case Studies are about choice not
sampling
• Because the boundaries are not fixed they
can change at any time
• Because Case Studies are about ‘doing’,
understanding and learning, the only way
of improving is to do more
47. References: Case Study LIterature
• Flyvberg, B. (2006) Five Misunderstandings about Case-Study
Research, Qualitative Inquiry 12(2): 219-245.
• Hakim, C. (1987) Research design: Strategies and choices in the
design of social research. London: Allen & Unwin
• Ragin, C.C. and Becker, H.S. (1992) What is a Case? Exploring the
Foundations of Social Inquiry. Cambridge: CUP.
• Stake, R.E. (1995) The Art of Case-Study Research. Thousand
Oaks CA: Sage.
• Stark, S. and Torrance, H. (2004) ‘Case Study’, in B. Somekh &
Cathy Lewin eds Research Methods in the Social Sciences, London:
Sage. Chap. 3, pp33-40
• Yin (2003) Case Study Research. 3rd Edition. Thousand Oaks CA:
Sage.
• Yin, (2004) Case Study Research: An Anthology, Thousand Oaks
CA: Sage.
48. References: Specific Studies
• Atkins, P.J. (1993) ‘How the West End was won: the struggle to
remove street barriers in Victorian London’, Journal of Historical
Geography 19(3): 265-277.
• Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
London: Allen Lane.
• Freud, S. (1900) The Interpretation of Dreams. Multiple editions.
• Lyon, D. (1994) The Electronic Eye: The Rise of the Surveillance
Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Mehmood, A. (2008) Analysing Socioeconomic Development on
Small Islands from an Evolutionary Perspective. Unpublished PhD
Thesis. Newcastle University.
• Sassen, S. (1991) The Global City: London, New York, Tokyo.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Whyte, W.F. (1943) Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of
an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
