Case Studies

Case studies are like birds. If someone randomly uttered the word “bird,” most of us would think of a prototypical bird—small, nests in trees, eats worms—despite the fact that we all know there are a huge range of birds from humming birds to ostriches. Case studies are much the same. When someone references a case study, we generally think of a detailed analysis of one person and his/her experiences even though we know that there are many types of case studies. Stake (1978) reported that the “object (target) of a social inquiry is seldom an individual person or enterprise. Unfortunately, it is such single objects that are usually thought of as ‘cases’” (p. 7). This is a challenge I face as I write a chapter that provides researchers and reviewers with information that will be helpful in judging the quality of case studies. Case studies can be large or small, qualitative or quantitative, individual or collective, involve long or short timeframes and multiple physical locations, draw upon a range of epistemological assumptions, and serve a variety of purposes. While in this chapter I focus only on qualitative case studies, a range of possibilities exist.