ABSTRACT
The social scientist making a case study of a community or organization typically makes use of the method of participant observation in one of its many variations, often in connection with other, more structured methods such as interviewing. The aims of the case study and the kinds of problems it ordinarily poses for study suggest particular techniques of data gathering and analysis. Observational materials, since they are usually gathered over a long period of time, can be analyzed sequentially. That is, analysis need not await completion of data gathering but can go on concurrently with it; results of early analyses may be used to direct further data-gathering operations. Observational study is useful in identifying and specifying such problems and in finding their origins and consequences at various levels and in various parts of the group. Every case study allows us to make generalizations about the relations of the various phenomena studied.
