The Case Study as a Serious Research Strategy

Abstract

The common stereotype of the &dquo;case study&dquo; is that this way of doing research: (1) should be used at the exploratory stages, (2) leads only to unconfirmable conclusions, and (3) is really a method of last resort. This stereotype has been reinforced by virtually every textbook in social science methods.’ In spite of the stereotype, case studies paradoxically seem to be appearing with increased frequency. Typical case study topics include: organizational decision-making, community studies, innovative projects, family and individual life histories, economic development, and housing structures and markets.2 Case studies are even quite commonly found among program evaluation studies (e.g., Kennedy, 1979), even though the standard folklore-again represented by nearly every textbook on program evaluation-would claim such studies to be the sole province of quasi-experimentation.3 Does this continuing use of case studies mean that we are exploring more, or that we are having to use our last resort more frequently? Or, could it possibly mean that the common stereotype of the case study has been misleading? Close examination of case study research, including two original in-vestigations of knowledge utilization (Yin and Gwaltney, 1981a), strongly suggests that the stereotype is in fact wrong. Although case studies indeed can be used for exploratory purposes, the approach also