CASE STUDY RESEARCH
By: Robert Fontan
Period 7
PURPOSE/FOCUS
• To explore why and how a situation happens in a certain case (individual
,group, unit, etc.)
• An intense study about a case aimed to generalize over several units, to
understand why a situation occurs inside a case.
METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION
• Before collecting any types of data we must first identify exactly what our case
is
• To do so we must conduct background research to understand more about
our case, which would mean literature reviews, media reviews, and reports.
• Once we know about our “case”, methods of data collection would include
surveys ,interviews, observation, and collection of physical objects
PRIMARY DATA
• Interviews
• Surveys
• Documentation Review
• Observation
• Collection of Physical Objects
SECONDARY DATA
• Literature review,
• Media review
• Research Papers
• General information about a case can be used.
ADVANTAGES
• A single-case study allows learning about a specific phenomenon occurring in a
single unit.
• A multiple-case study is more common and is used to compare different units
inside a case.
• Case studies allow for a deeper understanding of a complex issue that occurs
in people.
• Due to the vague nature of case studies a researcher is not confined to a single
method
DISADVANTAGES
• A single-case study is often too small and unreliable to provide any meaningful
results about a situation.
• This prompts researchers to pursue a bigger, more complex study in the form
of a multiple-case study.
• Which involves deep understanding of all the different units in the study, this
then causes much more data to be used and analyzed in order to get accurate
results.
HOW IS DATA ANALYZED
• Organizing Data into categories
• Creating displays of Information (bar graphs, pie charts, etc.)
• Tabulating frequency of events
After analysis, researchers in a case study will purposely try to look for an
alternative to what is initially found in the data, which often leads to short
interviews to confirm a fact found in the data.