But before proceeding down this path, it should be emphasized that case study research is not exclusively concerned with qualitative methods: all evidence is drawn into the database of the case study researcher. Thus, for the case study researcher, all evidence is of some value, and this value (reliability) must be carefully assessed.
Research Preliminaries
The importance of formulating your research direction in terms of questions is that you are then driven to consider your methods: How would I answer these questions. In the real world, there are always limits to what the researcher can do - ethically, practically (especially avoid making life difficult for people who have many other things to contend with).
Evidence: The Primary Concern
But it is also of great practical value when you come to write your report. The logbook is more than a set of rough notes: it is a fundamental part of your database and must be processed.
Evidence: What to Look Out For
The value of being a participant observer, perhaps becoming a temporary member of the environment, is that you are more likely to get at the informal reality. It may happen that you make a presentation to people in the environment where you work. You may need to set up a regular consultative group - especially if what you are doing has or could have political implications: again, it serves the dual purpose of informing your 'hosts'; and getting feedback from them.
These are those who do the same things as you, are experts in the type of research you are undertaking, or are experts in research methods. In a sense, you have to write your own syllabus and you are the only one studying it. Your supervisor (if you have one) is likely to know a lot about the broad area of research you are working on – without being an expert on your specific topic.
Perhaps more importantly, they will be experts in the type of research you are doing. The teaching approach is to get you to summarize, explain, justify, question what you are doing.
W ri tten and Electronically Stored Material
They work best when your research topic fits into one or two of the main databases. However, finding the references is one thing; getting hold of the actual papers is quite another. This formal representation should not be taken as an accurate representation of informal reality.
However, in a case study, they are part of the evidence, even though their relationship to other types of evidence is not straightforward. These documents have not been prepared to answer your research questions: they are part of the evidence base. Again, highlighting important passages will help you find the elements you might want to use later.
Interesting findings often arise from a researcher's careful analysis of official or other statistics; and getting around the limitations of how the statistics are organized to get valuable answers often shows a researcher's ingenuity. But so is much of the evidence covered in case study research.
Observation: Looking and Listening
You can spend a lot of time and effort to overcome these difficulties, so you should be aware that it will be worth the effort. If you are researching ethical standards in a profession, talking to members of that group will be primary. Observation: Look and listen battery of methods, or come to be seen as inappropriate or too time-consuming.
The information can be rough for you, and group members can be encouraged to be more attentive and analytical, for example, about group processes or behaviors. But you should be careful about forming (or appearing to form) relationships with particular members of a group (a caution we expressed earlier): it can alienate you from the rest of the group. Observation: Looking and listening behaviors: and you need to be clear about what you are observing.
You need to get enough data from sufficient observations to be reasonably sure of it. You are going to have to concentrate hard so that you don't want to be plagued by procedural distractions on the day: you have to be benevolent and confident in your use of the schedule.
In terviewing
If a large number of people are involved, then interviewing them all is out of the question, especially for the lone researcher. The overwhelming strength of the face-to-face interview is the 'richness' of the communication that is possible. You must of course ask permission from the interviewee - in advance if possible - and you must know what to do if the person refuses.
As you compile the list, you will sense that some of the headings you have written down are not sufficient or necessary. Place the number of the category against the statement on the transcript: this tells you that you have entered it and where it has gone; if you cannot classify a statement, mark it 'u.c.' (unclassifiable). But if you start with something simple, the essential logic of the process becomes clear.
Telephone interviewing - at one level or another - has emerged in the last decade, largely because it offers some of the virtues of the face-to-face interview, e.g. These are at the structured end of the verbal-information-getting continuum and usually have a minor place in case studies (if they are used at all).
Quantitative Data in Case Study Research
Graph (c) seems the most baffling, so let's deal with that first. It is not claimed that this is always the case, but that you should be alert to alternative, more complex explanations. The researcher must be rigorous in seeking alternative or additional explanations for any obvious consequence (or lack thereof) in a time series analysis.
Quantitative data in case study research graph (b) - the apparent 'no effects' pattern - presents another set of questions. Time series analysis can be used with successive observations (of the structured kind), usually where some changes are to be introduced after a period of 'baseline' observations. Quantitative data in case study Research circumstances of the men and women involved are very similar.
For case study research that works in the real world, quantitative data analysis requires careful consideration of what it might mean—whether it is statistically significant or not. Statistical significance strongly depends on the size of the numbers involved: if the numbers in the table on p.
Ph ysical Artefacts
Also, if you're training designers, giving examples of the stages in the process (including dead ends and things going wrong) can be helpful and encouraging for future designers who lack confidence in achieving. the sophisticated results they see coming out of designers' workshops and offices. In the introduction to one of his books, Joseph Conrad wrote: 'My task is that with the power of the written word. For example, Sarah Hall's account of an elderly stroke patient's development of artistic skills is quoted in the chapter on observation (pp. 52-3).
But examples of work that the students have produced without help will add to the reader's understanding, a better understanding of the difficulties these students may have in coping with the curriculum demands and the demands of the labor market. In setting up a case study (discussed in the next chapter) these examples or illustrations are often attached to an appendix, so that they do not interrupt the flow of the text. But they may be very much part of the narrative, even if they are not textual.
Illustrations and patterns are just as much part of the chain of evidence as designable material. They must appear at the appropriate point in the sequence because the text that follows will read differently because of looking at them.-.
The Research Report: Analysing and Presenting Your Findings
It is here that the task of writing up is made difficult by the lack of progressive organization in the compilation of the research evidence and the development in research design and theorizing. In particular, what you are looking for is different kinds of evidence that bear on the same questions in your research. A review of the literature from which issues that require further research are drawn; a clear specification of the research questions themselves; the method used to answer the questions; the results achieved; a discussion and analysis of these; the theoretical gains or developments assessed for their shortcomings; modification of the theory proposed; the need for further research outlined.
The naturalistic researcher is more concerned with providing insight into the reality of the research process. This is not quite the same as the logic of the research process: you will discover evidence related to discoveries you have made before; subsequent knowledge will cause you to revise your understanding of what has gone before. Fourth, your research questions: their development, in response to your increasingly clear grasp of the issues, is an ongoing thread.
Therefore, at every step, a person should ask himself: 'Is this one of the things that are superfluous?' And that is that you can think about the products of your thinking.
The Power of the Case Study
If you are willing to work on your writing, you can achieve a final result that will surprise you; writing is all about rewriting. Other cases of this kind have changed our understanding of what IQ means: that it does not set a limit to what people can achieve. Not all case studies can have this revelatory quality, something that challenges the existing order of things.
A factory in decline, an inner-city school working backwards from a disadvantaged position: the direction and success or failure of these institutions can be illustrated through a case study of the process of change, of decline or improvement. Its actual power is partly a function of the use it is put to.
Acknowledgements and
Recommended Further Reading
Index
