CASE STUDIES

What is a Case Study? A case study is a specific, holistic, often unique instance that is frequently designed to illustrate a more general principle; The study of an instance in action; The study of an evolving situation; Case studies portray ‘what it is like’ to be in a particular situation.

ELEMENTS OF CASE STUDY Rich, vivid and holistic description (‘thick description’) and portrayal of events, contexts and situations through the eyes of participants (including the researcher); Contexts are temporal, physical, organizational, institutional, interpersonal; Chronological narrative

Combination of description, analysis and interpretation; Focus on actors and participants; Let the data speak for themselves (don’t over-interpret).

Types of Case Studies There are many types of case studies identified by different researchers (Cohen, et al., 2008) Yin (1984): Exploratory (a pilot to other studies or research questions) Descriptive (providing narrative accounts) Explanatory (testing theories) Stake (1994): Intrinsic (to understand the case in question) Instrumental (examining a particular case to gain insight into an issue or a theory) Collective (groups of individual studies to gain a fuller picture)

Types of Case Studies Meriam (1988) Stenhouse (1985) Ethnographic Historical Psychological Sociological Stenhouse (1985) Ethnographic – single in-depth study Action research case study Evaluative case study Educational case study

STRENGTHS OF CASE STUDIES Can establish cause and effect; Rooted in real contexts; Regard context as determinant of behaviour; The whole is more than the sum of the parts (holism); Strong on reality; Recognize and accept complexity, uniqueness and unpredictability;

STRENGTHS OF CASE STUDIES Lead to action (link to action research); Can focus on critical incidents; Written in accessible style and are immediately intelligible; Practicable (can be done by a single researcher); Can permit generalizations and application to similar situations.

PROBLEMS WITH CASE STUDIES Difficult to organize; Limited generalizability; Problems of cross-checking; Risk of bias, selectivity and subjectivity.

Unit of Analysis Unit of analysis is the actual source of information An individual (a student who has trouble speaking in English) A classroom (a writing classroom) A school (a private school) A program (a national curriculum project) An event (a celebration) An activity (learning to write an essay) An ongoing process (student teaching)

DATA IN CASE STUDIES Observations (structured to unstructured); Field notes; Interviews (structured to unstructured); Documents; Numbers.

Continua of data collection, types and analysis in case study research Unstructured (field notes) Data Collection (Interviews – open to closed) Structured (survey, census data) Narrative Data Types (coded qualitative data and non parametric statistics) Numeric (ratio scale data) Journalistic (impressionistic) Data Analysis (content analysis) Statistical (inferential statistics)

Reliability and Validity Like other research methods, it is important to demonstrate reliability and validity in case studies. This might be difficult because of the uniqueness of the situations; they may be inconsistent with other case studies. Thus, there are some questions to be answered while conducting a case study:

Reliability and Validity What exactly is a case? How is it identified and selected? What kind of case study is this (what is the purpose)? To what extent is triangulation required and how will it be addressed? How will the balance be struck between uniqueness and generalization? What is the most appropriate form of writing up and reporting the case study?

References Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2008). Research Methods in Education. Routledge: New York Denzin, N. (1984). The research act. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Hitchcock, G. & Hughes, D. (1995). Research and the Teacher (2nd Edition). London: Routledge Yin, R. K. (1994). Case Study Research: Design and Methods (2nd Edition). Thousand Oaks: Sage