19.1 Case Study

What is the purpose of case study research?

We’ve already covered that qualitative research is often about developing a deep understanding of a topic from a relatively small sample, rather than a broader understanding from the many. This is especially true for case study research. Case studies are essentially a ‘deep dive’ into a very focused topic. Skeptics of qualitative research often discount the value in studying the experiences and understandings of individuals and small groups, arguing that this type of research produces little value because it doesn’t necessarily apply to a large number of people (i.e. produce generalizable findings). Hopefully you recognize the positivist argument here. These folks are likely to be unimpressed with the narrow focus that a case study adopts, suggesting that the restricted purview of a case study has little value to the scientific community. However, interpretativist qualitative researchers would counter that by thoroughly studying people, interactions, events, and the context in which they occur, researchers uncover key information about human beings, social interactions, and the nature of society itself. Remember, from this interpretative philosophical orientation we are not looking for what is “true” for the many, but we are seeking to recognize and better understand the complexity of life and human experiences; the multiple truths of a few. Case studies can be excellent for this!

Part of the allure of case studies stem from their diversity. You might choose to study:

• Individuals, such as a client with a unique need or a social worker with a unique position
• Small Groups, such as a newly formed anti-bullying student task force at a school
• Population (usually relatively small), such as the residents of a subsidized housing community that are losing their homes in a gentrifying area
• Events, such as a member of a senior center dying by suicide
• Process, such as a community organizing entity targeting a local ordinance allowing waste storage in a community with few socioeconomic resources

If we choose to utilize a case study design for our research, the use of theory can be incredibly helpful to guide and support our purpose throughout the research process. The Writing Center at Colorado State University offers a very helpful web resource for all aspects of case study development, and one page is specifically dedicated to theoretical application for case study development. They outline three general categories of theory: individual theories, organizational theories, and social theories, all of which case study researchers might draw from. These are especially helpful for us as social work researchers, who may focus on research across micro, meso, and macro environments (as evidenced in the aforementioned case study examples). For instance, if you are the researcher in the last example, looking at community members challenging a local ordinance, you might draw on Community Organizing Theory and Capabilities Perspective to structure your study. As an alternative, if you are studying the experience of the first Black woman board president of a national organization, you might borrow from Minority Stress and Strengths Perspective as models as you develop your inquiry. Whatever your focus, theory can be an important tool to aid in orienting and directing your work.

What is involved with case study research?

Due to the diversity of topics studied and types of case study design, no two case studies look alike (just like snowflakes). For this reason, I’m going to focus this section on some common hallmarks of case studies that will hopefully help you as you think about designing and consuming case study research.

As the name implies, our emphasis with case study research is to provide an understanding of a specific case. The range of what qualifies as a case is extensive, but regardless, we are primarily aiming to explore and describe what is going on in the given case we are studying. As case study researchers, this means we need to work hard to gather rich details. We aren’t satisfied with surface, generic overviews or summaries, as these won’t provide the multidimensional understanding we are hoping for. Thinking back to our chapter on qualitative rigor, a case study researcher might aim to produce a thick description with the details they gather as a sign of rigor in their work. To gather these details, we need to be open to subtleties and nuances about our topic. If we are expending the energy to study a case in this level of detail, the research assumptions are that the case could provide valuable information and that we currently know relatively little about this case. As such, we don’t want to assume that we know what we are looking for. This means that we need to build in ways to capture unanticipated data and check our own assumptions as we design and conduct our study. We might use tools like reflexive journaling and peer debriefing to support rigor in this area.

Another good way to demonstrate both rigor and cultural humility when using this approach is engage stakeholders actively throughout the research process who are intimately involved with the case. This demonstrates good research practice in at least two ways. It potentially helps you to gather relevant and more meaningful data about the case, as a person who is connected to the case will likely know what to look for and where. Secondly, and more importantly, it reflects transparency and respect for the subjects of the case you are studying.

Another key feature of most case studies is that they don’t rely on one source of data. Again, returning to our exploration of qualitative rigor, triangulation is a very important concept for case study research. Because our target is relatively narrow in case study design, we often try to approach understanding it from many different angles. As a metaphor, you might think of developing a 360° view of your case. What level of dimensionality can you introduce by looking at different types of data or different perspectives on the issue you are studying? While other types of qualitative research may rely solely on data collected from one method, such as interviews, case studies traditionally require multiple. So, in the example above where you are studying the residents of a subsidized housing community that are losing their homes in a gentrifying area, you might decide to gather data by:

• Conducting interviews with residents
• Making observations in the community
• Attending community meetings
• Conducting key informant interviews with clergy, educators, human service providers, librarians, historians, and local politicians who serve the area
• Examining correspondence that community members share with you about the impending changes
• Examining media coverage about the impending changes

Furthermore, if you are invested in engaging stakeholders as discussed above, you could form a resident advisory group that would help to oversee the research process in its entirety. Ideally this group would have input into how results are shared and what they would hope to gain as a result of the study (i.e. what kind of change would they like to see come from this).

Case studies can often draw out the creativity in us as we consider the range of sources we may want to tap for data on our case. Of course, this creativity comes at a price, in that we invite the challenge of designing research protocols for all these different methods of data collection and address them thoroughly in our IRB applications! Finally, with the level of detail and variety of data sources we have already discussed, case studies endeavor to pay attention to and provide a good accounting of context. If we are working to provide a rich, thick description of our case, we need to offer our audience information about the context in which our case exists. This can mean that we collect data on a range of things that might include:

• the socio-polticial environment surrounding our case
• the background or historical information that preceded our case
• the demographic information that helps to describe the local community that our case exists in

As you consider what contextual information you plan to gather and share, stay fluid. Again, it is likely that we won’t know in advance the many contextual features that are reflected in our case. If you are doing a good job listening to your participants and engaging stakeholder in your process, they will tell you what is important to note. As social workers, we draw on a person-in-environment approach to help us conceptualize the ways in which our clients interact with the world around them and the challenges they encounter. Similarly, as researchers, we want to conceptualize case study-in-environment as we are developing our case study projects.