Case Studies...not what you think

The term "case study" has multiple meanings.

In faculties of business, a case study actually refers to something else: "The case method of analysis involves studying actual business situations, written as an in-depth presentation of a company, its market, and its strategic decisions, in order to improve a manager's or a student's problem-solving ability. Cases typically investigate a contemporary issue in a real-life context. There are multiple issues to consider and many 'correct' or viable alternatives to solve the case issues are presented." (Encyclopedia of Management, 4th ed., cited in Queen's U Library entry titled "Case Study"). In education, the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership publishes case studies of this sort: and they are very specific about how to structure them. As teaching tools, case studies should present a situation, but leave the reader with an ambiguous, open-ended solution to formulate.

In the definition above, the case study is a teaching tool, and not necessarily a research method.

Rather than an open-ended teaching tool, a research case study seeks to reconstruct a particular event or situation (bounded by time), and analyze it using the researcher's chosen theoretical and conceptual frameworks.

A case study (in research) is “an in-depth, multifaceted investigation, using qualitative research methods, of a single social phenomenon. The study is conducted in great detail and often relies on the use of several data sources” (Orum et al. 1991: 2). They can be exploratory, explanatory, or descriptive. Various forms of case studies are recognized, for example:

Image from Babak Farshchian, IT3010 Lecture 8 Case Study Research 

The case study research design yields several fundamental advantages for complex research:

1. Case studies provide information from a number of sources over a period of time, resulting in a holistic study of complex actions associated with policy formulation, including webs of social processes and political interaction. As such, researchers constructing case studies “consider not only the voices of actors of focal concern, but also the perspectives and actions of other relevant groups and the interactions among them” (Snow & Anderson 1991: 149). 
2. Case studies examine processes within a specific context, draw on multiple sources of information, and relate a story, usually in a chronological order. Moreover, they are ideal for revealing “information patterns” that might not appear in official documentation (Sjoberg, Williams, Vaughan & Sjoberg 1991). Case studies allow for analysis of how or why particular phenomena occur though rich, textured descriptions of social or infrastructural processes (Scanlon 1997), such as the focus for this research. 
3. Case studies lend themselves to theory-generation and forming generalizations by suggesting new interpretations and concepts or reexamining existing concepts and interpretations in major and innovative ways (Yin 2013). Because of the complex nature of interpreting policy processes, and the complexity of the conceptual framework, a case study allows the researcher to further refine and articulate the theory which this study incorporates. 
4. Triangulation of a variety of data strengthens the validity of case studies (Orum et al. 1991). The use of multiple sources of evidence contributes to construct and context validity, and provides checks and balances that protect the inquiry from participant bias related to reliance on single sources. 

References & further reading

Orum, A.M., Feagin, J.R. & Sjoberg, G. (1991). “Introduction: The nature of the case study.” In J.R. Feagin, A.M. Orum, & G. Sjoberg (Eds.) A Case For the Case Study, 1-16. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Scanlon, E. (1997). Suggestions for case study research methods. Retrieved from http://www.gwbssw.wustl.edu/~csd/evaluation/casestudy/caseguide.html

Sjoberg, G., Williams, N., Vaughan, T.R. & Sjoberg, A. (1991). “The case study approach in social research: Basic methodological issues.” In J.R. Feagin, A.M. Orum & G. Sjoberg (Eds.) A case for the case study, 27-79. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Snow, D.A. & Anderson, L. (1991). “Researching the homeless: The characteristic features and virtues of the case study.” In J.R. Feagin, A.M. Orum & G. Sjoberg (Eds.). A case for the case study, 148-173. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Yin, R.K. (2013). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd Ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.