ABSTRACT
Planning to embark on fieldwork-based research can be a troublesome matter. This may be so particularly when traditional research methods like the survey questionnaire seem to be inappropriate. This chapter aim is that there is an approach—the case-study approach—to doing social research which, by virtue of its flexibility, may be adaptable to one's needs. While some reference will be made to definitions that have been attempted, the primary concern will be to try to identify the distinctive or at least the typical features of the case study. In designing the study the researchers were faced with limited resources and a somewhat ill-defined phenomenon. The approach decided upon envisaged a single case study of ‘one “population” of manual workers in one particular context at one particular time’. The logic of comparison is one of several logics that can be used in the design of multiple case studies or single case studies with embedded units of analysis.
