COMPOSING CASE STUDIES

Steps, guidelines and considerations for composing case studies



Table of Contents

Introduction3

Extensive Approach3

Intensive Approach4

Discussion5

Phenomena and cases5

Micro-level, focusing on one actor6

Micro-level, more than one actor involve:6

Macro-level, only one actor7

Macro-level, more than one actor involved7

Macro-level, only one actor7

Macro-level, more than one actor involved7

A combination of micro and macro level actors7

Implication of Case studies9

Conclusion11

Steps, guidelines and considerations for composing case studies

Introduction

In case study research, we describe and explain certain phenomena that relate to people, groups, organizations, communities, large towns or even countries. Such phenomena are, for instance: leisure time activities; the treatment of an ADHD child; the determinants of individual health; the way in which people use their social network; how people cope with a disaster; riots; strikes; the process of adoption of an organizational innovation in a hospital; the principles according to which political coalitions are formed; or, an arms' race between nation-states. In order to study social phenomena, we use a diversity of approaches or strategies. They can roughly be divided into two general types: extensive approaches and intensive approaches (Michael, 1999).

Extensive Approach

In an extensive approach, we collect information about the relevant properties of a large number of instances of a phenomenon. We draw our conclusions by putting together all the information and calculating and interpreting correlations between the properties of these examples. For instance, in a study about the conditions for and causes of riots (the phenomenon under study) we may start by making an inventory of, say, 200 riots using documentary sources. We establish the 'scores' of each riot with respect to a set of properties (such as the number of people involved, the extent of damage to property, the weather conditions), and study the correlations between these properties (these are usually called variables) in order to construct a model of causes and consequences.

In extensive research, we use a large set of events, people, organizations or nation-states to ground our conclusions about the phenomenon. In sociology, in the political and educational sciences, as well as in several other disciplines, large-scale surveying of people is the dominant extensive strategy to collect empirical data. Hundreds or even thousands of respondents may be involved to study a phenomenon. This might, for instance, be the causation of smoking habits in individuals. Each survey respondent provides information in the form of answers to a series of standardized questions. These answers are not used to study the development of the phenomenon within this individual person. They are aggregated over all respondents to create information about frequency distributions and relationships between the variables under study which might be helpful in under-standing and explaining the phenomenon (Michael, 1999).

Intensive Approach

Alternatively, in applying an intensive approach, a researcher focuses on only one specific instance of the phenomenon to be studied or on only a handful of instances in order to study a phenomenon in depth. We would, therefore, be inclined to study some riots, or some young people, or some traffic accidents, or only a handful of schools by probing into the details of the process ...