case study general meaning

In terms of the interview structure, I recommend categorizing the questions in a way that the answers flow into six specific sections that will mirror a successful case study format. Combined, they'll allow you to gather enough information to put together a rich, comprehensive study.

Open with the customer's business.

The goal of this section is to generate a better understanding of the company's current challenges and goals, plus how they fit into the landscape of their industry. Sample questions might include:

• How long have you been in business?
• How many employees do you have?
• What are some of the objectives of your department at this time?

Cite a problem or pain point.

To tell a compelling story, you need context that helps match the customer's needs with your solution. Sample questions might include:

• What challenges and objectives led you to look for a solution?
• What might have happened if you did not identify a solution?
• Did you explore other solutions before this that did not work out? If so, what happened?

Discuss the decision process.

Exploring how the customer decided to work with you helps to guide potential customers through their own decision-making processes.

Sample questions might include:

• How did you hear about our product or service?
• Who was involved in the selection process?
• What was most important to you when evaluating your options?

Explain how a solution was implemented.

The focus here should be placed on the customer's experience during the onboarding process. Sample questions might include:

• How long did it take to get up and running?
• Did that meet your expectations?
• Who was involved in the process?

Explain how the solution works.

The goal of this section is to better understand how the customer is using your product or service. Sample questions might include:

• Is there a particular aspect of the product or service that you rely on most?
• Who is using the product or service?

End with the results.

In this section, you want to uncover impressive measurable outcomes — the more numbers, the better. Sample questions might include:

• How is the product or service helping you save time and increase productivity?
• In what ways does that enhance your competitive advantage?
• How much have you increased metrics X, Y, and Z?

It’s a smart idea to send a copy of your interview questions to your subject ahead of time so they can prepare strong answers and collect the numerical data you need from them.

10. Lay out your case study format.

When it comes time to take all of the information you‘ve collected and actually turn it into something useful, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. I always do, but I also know that it works out in the end, so I just jump on in and work it through.

So where should you start? What should you include? What's the best way to structure it?

It‘s important to first understand that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the ways you can present a case study.

They can be very visual, which you’ll see in some of the examples we've included below, and can sometimes be communicated through video or photos with a bit of accompanying text.

Here are the sections I’d suggest, and I'll cover these in more detail after #11 below:

• Title. Keep it short. Develop a succinct but interesting project name you can give the work you did with your subject.
• Subtitle. Use this copy to briefly elaborate on the accomplishment. What was done? The case study itself will explain how you got there.
• Executive Summary . A 2-4 sentence summary of the entire story. You'll want to follow it with 2-3 bullet points that display metrics showcasing success.
• About the Subject. An introduction to the person or company you served, which can be pulled from a LinkedIn Business profile or client website.
• Challenges and Objectives. A 2-3 paragraph description of the customer's challenges, before using your product or service. This section should also include the goals or objectives the customer set out to achieve.
• How Product/Service Helped. A 2-3 paragraph section that describes how your product or service provided a solution to their problem.
• Results. A 2-3 paragraph testimonial that proves how your product or service specifically benefited the person or company and helped achieve its goals. Include numbers to quantify your contributions.
• Supporting Visuals or Quotes. Pick one or two powerful quotes that you would feature at the bottom of the sections above, as well as a visual that supports the story you are telling.
• Future Plans. Everyone likes an epilogue. Comment on what's ahead for your case study subject, whether or not those plans involve you.
• Call-to-Action (CTA). Not every case study needs a CTA, but putting a passive one at the end of your case study can encourage your readers to take an action on your website after learning about the work you've done.

When laying out your case study, focus on conveying the information you've gathered in the most clear and concise way possible.

Make it easy to scan and comprehend, and be sure to provide an attractive call-to-action at the bottom — that should provide readers an opportunity to learn more about your product or service.

11. Publish and promote your case study.

Once you‘ve completed your case study, it’s time to publish and promote it.

Some case study formats have pretty obvious promotional outlets — a video case study can go on YouTube, just as an infographic case study can go on Pinterest.

But there are still other ways to publish and promote your case study. Here are a couple of ideas.

Lead Gen in a Blog Post

As stated earlier, written case studies make terrific lead-generators if you convert them into a downloadable format, like a PDF.

To generate leads from your case study, consider writing a blog post that tells an abbreviated story of your client‘s success and asking readers to fill out a form with their name and email address if they’d like to read the rest in your PDF.

Then, promote this blog post on social media, through a Facebook post or a tweet.

Published as a Page on Your Website

As a growing business, you might need to display your case study out in the open to gain the trust of your target audience.

Rather than gating it behind a landing page, publish your case study to its own page on your website, and direct people to it from your homepage with a “Case Studies” or “Testimonials” button along your homepage's top navigation bar.

The traditional case study format includes the following parts: a title and subtitle, a client profile, a summary of the customer’s challenges and objectives, an account of how your solution helped, and a description of the results. You might also want to include supporting visuals and quotes, future plans, and calls-to-action.

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• Case Study | Definition, Examples & Methods

Case Study | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on 5 May 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 30 January 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organisation, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating, and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

Table of contents

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyse the case.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

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Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

• Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
• Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
• Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
• Open up new directions for future research

Unlike quantitative or experimental research, a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

If you find yourself aiming to simultaneously investigate and solve an issue, consider conducting action research . As its name suggests, action research conducts research and takes action at the same time, and is highly iterative and flexible. 

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience, or phenomenon.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

• Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
• Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
• Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews, observations, and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data .

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis, with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results , and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyse its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

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• Introduction

The case study creation process

Types of case studies, benefits and limitations.

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• Table Of Contents

case study , detailed description and assessment of a specific situation in the real world created for the purpose of deriving generalizations and other insights from it. A case study can be about an individual, a group of people, an organization, or an event, among other subjects.

By focusing on a specific subject in its natural setting, a case study can help improve understanding of the broader features and processes at work. Case studies are a research method used in multiple fields, including business, criminology , education , medicine and other forms of health care, anthropology , political science , psychology , and social work . Data in case studies can be both qualitative and quantitative. Unlike experiments, where researchers control and manipulate situations, case studies are considered to be “naturalistic” because subjects are studied in their natural context . ( See also natural experiment .)

The creation of a case study typically involves the following steps:

• The research question to be studied is defined, informed by existing literature and previous research. Researchers should clearly define the scope of the case, and they should compile a list of evidence to be collected as well as identify the nature of insights that they expect to gain from the case study.
• Once the case is identified, the research team is given access to the individual, organization, or situation being studied. Individuals are informed of risks associated with participation and must provide their consent , which may involve signing confidentiality or anonymity agreements.
• Researchers then collect evidence using multiple methods, which may include qualitative techniques, such as interviews, focus groups , and direct observations, as well as quantitative methods, such as surveys, questionnaires, and data audits. The collection procedures need to be well defined to ensure the relevance and accuracy of the evidence.
• The collected evidence is analyzed to come up with insights. Each data source must be reviewed carefully by itself and in the larger context of the case study so as to ensure continued relevance. At the same time, care must be taken not to force the analysis to fit (potentially preconceived) conclusions. While the eventual case study may serve as the basis for generalizations, these generalizations must be made cautiously to ensure that specific nuances are not lost in the averages.
• Finally, the case study is packaged for larger groups and publication. At this stage some information may be withheld, as in business case studies, to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. In scientific fields, the completed case study needs to be a coherent whole, with all findings and statistical relationships clearly documented.

Case studies have been used as a research method across multiple fields. They are particularly popular in the fields of law, business, and employee training; they typically focus on a problem that an individual or organization is facing. The situation is presented in considerable detail, often with supporting data, to discussion participants, who are asked to make recommendations that will solve the stated problem. The business case study as a method of instruction was made popular in the 1920s by instructors at Harvard Business School who adapted an approach used at Harvard Law School in which real-world cases were used in classroom discussions. Other business and law schools started compiling case studies as teaching aids for students. In a business school case study, students are not provided with the complete list of facts pertaining to the topic and are thus forced to discuss and compare their perspectives with those of their peers to recommend solutions.

In criminology , case studies typically focus on the lives of an individual or a group of individuals. These studies can provide particularly valuable insight into the personalities and motives of individual criminals, but they may suffer from a lack of objectivity on the part of the researchers (typically because of the researchers’ biases when working with people with a criminal history), and their findings may be difficult to generalize.

In sociology , the case-study method was developed by Frédéric Le Play in France during the 19th century. This approach involves a field worker staying with a family for a period of time, gathering data on the family members’ attitudes and interactions and on their income, expenditures, and physical possessions. Similar approaches have been used in anthropology . Such studies can sometimes continue for many years.

Case studies provide insight into situations that involve a specific entity or set of circumstances. They can be beneficial in helping to explain the causal relationships between quantitative indicators in a field of study, such as what drives a company’s market share. By introducing real-world examples, they also plunge the reader into an actual, concrete situation and make the concepts real rather than theoretical. They also help people study rare situations that they might not otherwise experience.

Because case studies are in a “naturalistic” environment , they are limited in terms of research design: researchers lack control over what they are studying, which means that the results often cannot be reproduced. Also, care must be taken to stay within the bounds of the research question on which the case study is focusing. Other limitations to case studies revolve around the data collected. It may be difficult, for instance, for researchers to organize the large volume of data that can emerge from the study, and their analysis of the data must be carefully thought through to produce scientifically valid insights. The research methodology used to generate these insights is as important as the insights themselves, for the latter need to be seen in the proper context. Taken out of context, they may lead to erroneous conclusions. Like all scientific studies, case studies need to be approached objectively; personal bias or opinion may skew the research methods as well as the results. ( See also confirmation bias .)

Business case studies in particular have been criticized for approaching a problem or situation from a narrow perspective. Students are expected to come up with solutions for a problem based on the data provided. However, in real life, the situation is typically reversed: business managers face a problem and must then look for data to help them solve it.

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What Is a Case Study? Definition, Examples, Types & Methods

What is the definition of a case study.

A case study is typically a research paper to generate an in-depth and multi-faced understanding of any complicated issue in a life scenario. It is a well-written research design that is very commonly used in a wide range of disciplines.

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Case Study Examples

• Marketing case study examples: Case studies in marketing are written to show your success, and you must always prominently showcase your buoyant suits. You can use bright, bold colours with many contesting fonts, shapes, and simple icons to highlight your case study.
• You need to highlight your big win on the 2nd page with a bright orange colour with highlighted circles.
• Make the essential data stand out exceptionally to track your prospective customers.
• Marketing all the critical data is very important in your marketing case study.

Use a straightforward and crystal clear layout of the case study.

• Using a straightforward layout in any case study is very effective. For example, keeping a spotless white background and drawing slim lines helps to separate these sections in a specific way for formatting the case study.
• Making the information clear helps draw attention to the results and helps to improve the accessibility of the design.
• The case study examples must sit nicely with more extended reports and a consistent layout.

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What Are the Types of Case Studies?

Case studies can be categorized into several types based on their focus and purpose. Here are some common types of case studies:

• Collective Case Studies : These types of case studies involve investigating any group of individuals. Here, the researchers need to study a group of people in a specific setting or any community. Ex: Psychologists must explore how access to the resources in any society can affect people’s mental wellness.
• Descriptive Case Studies: These involve starting with any descriptive theory. The subjects are then observed, and the gathered information is compared to the preexisting approaches.
• Explanatory Case Studies: These types of case studies are primarily used to conduct any casual investigation. Here, the researchers are more interested in looking for the factors that caused specific results.
• Exploratory Case Studies : These case studies are conducted when researchers want to explore a new or relatively unexplored topic. They are more open-ended and aim to generate hypotheses and ideas for further research.
• Instrumental Case Studies : These case studies are selected because they provide insights into a broader issue or theory. The case is used as a means to investigate a more general phenomenon.
• Intrinsic Case Studies : In these case studies, the case itself is of particular interest due to its uniqueness or rarity. The goal is not to generalize findings to a larger population but to understand the specific case deeply.
• Pilot Case Studies : Pilot case studies are conducted as a preliminary investigation before launching a larger study. They help researchers refine their research questions, methods, and procedures.
• Problem-Oriented Case Studies : These case studies focus on solving a specific problem or addressing a particular issue. Researchers aim to provide practical solutions based on their analysis of the case.
• Ethnographic Case Studies : Ethnographic case studies involve immersing the researcher in the subject’s environment to gain an in-depth cultural understanding. This is often used in anthropology and sociology.
• Longitudinal Case Studies : Longitudinal studies involve observing and analyzing a case over an extended period of time. This allows researchers to track changes, developments, and trends that occur over time.
• Comparative Case Studies : Comparative case studies involve comparing two or more cases to draw similarities, differences, and patterns between them. This type of study is often used to test hypotheses or theories.
• Critical Instance Case Studies : Critical instance cases are chosen because they represent a crucial or pivotal event that can provide insights into a larger issue or theory.

Each type of case study serves a different purpose and is designed to answer specific research questions. Researchers choose the type of case study that best aligns with their objectives and the nature of the phenomenon they are investigating.

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What Are the Methods of a Case Study?

A   case study research   is a qualitative research design. It is often used in the social sciences since it involves observing the cases or subjects in their settings with the most minor interference from the researcher.

In the case study method, the researchers pose a definite question raging any individual or group for testing their hypotheses or theories. This is done by gathering data from the interviews with the essential data.

Case study research is a perfect way to understand the nuances of any matter often neglected in quantitative research methods. A case study is distinct from any other qualitative study in the following ways:

• Focused on the effect of any set of circumstances in any group or any individual
• It mostly begins with any specific question regarding one or more cases
• It usually focuses on the individual accounts and its experiences

The primary features of case study research methods are as follows:

• The case study methods   must involve the researcher asking a few questions of one person or a small group of people who are known as the respondents for testing the survey.
• The case study in the research mythology might apply triangulation to collect data. It is then analyzed and interpreted to form a hypothesis to be tested through further research or validated by other researchers.
• Concepts are defined using objective language with references to the Preconceived Notions. These individuals may have about them. A researcher sets out to discover by asking any specific question on how people think about their findings.
• The case study method needs a clear concept and theory to guide the processes. A well-organized research question is fundamental while conducting any case study since its results depend on it. The best approach for answering the research questions is challenging the preexisting theories, assumptions or hypotheses.

Benefits and Limitations of Case Studies

The benefits of case studies are as follows:

• Case studies give many details to be collected and will be easily obtained by the other research designs. The collected data is mostly richer than that can be funded via different experimental methods.
• Case studies are primarily conducted on the rare cases where more extensive samples of similar participants are unavailable.
• Within certain case studies, scientific experiments can also be conducted.
• The case studies can also help the experimenters adapt the ideas and produce novel hypotheses for later testing.

Disadvantages of Case Studies

• One of the main criticisms in case studies is that the collected data cannot necessarily be generated for any broader population. This can lead to data being collected over any case study that is only sometimes relevant or useful.
• Some of the case studies still need to be scientific. Many scientists used case studies for conducting several experiments, the results of which were only sometimes very successful.
• Case studies are primarily based on one person, so it can be only one experimenter who is collecting the data. This can lead to a bias in data collection that can influence the results in frequent designs.
• Drawing any definite cause or effect from many case studies is sometimes challenging.

Importance of Case Study

• A case study is a particular research h method involving an up-close and in-depth investigation of any subject, and it is related to a contextual position. These are produced by following a research form. The case study helps in bringing the understanding of any complex issue. This can extend experience or add strength to the already existing knowledge via the previous research. The contextual analysis revolves around a small number of events or situations.
• Researchers have used case studies for an extended period, and they have been successfully applied in various disciplines like social sciences.

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Home » Case Study – Methods, Examples and Guide

Case Study – Methods, Examples and Guide

Table of Contents

A case study is a research method that involves an in-depth examination and analysis of a particular phenomenon or case, such as an individual, organization, community, event, or situation.

It is a qualitative research approach that aims to provide a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the case being studied. Case studies typically involve multiple sources of data, including interviews, observations, documents, and artifacts, which are analyzed using various techniques, such as content analysis, thematic analysis, and grounded theory. The findings of a case study are often used to develop theories, inform policy or practice, or generate new research questions.

Types of Case Study

Types and Methods of Case Study are as follows:

Single-Case Study

A single-case study is an in-depth analysis of a single case. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to understand a specific phenomenon in detail.

For Example , A researcher might conduct a single-case study on a particular individual to understand their experiences with a particular health condition or a specific organization to explore their management practices. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as content analysis or thematic analysis. The findings of a single-case study are often used to generate new research questions, develop theories, or inform policy or practice.

Multiple-Case Study

A multiple-case study involves the analysis of several cases that are similar in nature. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to identify similarities and differences between the cases.

For Example, a researcher might conduct a multiple-case study on several companies to explore the factors that contribute to their success or failure. The researcher collects data from each case, compares and contrasts the findings, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as comparative analysis or pattern-matching. The findings of a multiple-case study can be used to develop theories, inform policy or practice, or generate new research questions.

Exploratory Case Study

An exploratory case study is used to explore a new or understudied phenomenon. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to generate hypotheses or theories about the phenomenon.

For Example, a researcher might conduct an exploratory case study on a new technology to understand its potential impact on society. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as grounded theory or content analysis. The findings of an exploratory case study can be used to generate new research questions, develop theories, or inform policy or practice.

Descriptive Case Study

A descriptive case study is used to describe a particular phenomenon in detail. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to provide a comprehensive account of the phenomenon.

For Example, a researcher might conduct a descriptive case study on a particular community to understand its social and economic characteristics. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as content analysis or thematic analysis. The findings of a descriptive case study can be used to inform policy or practice or generate new research questions.

Instrumental Case Study

An instrumental case study is used to understand a particular phenomenon that is instrumental in achieving a particular goal. This type of case study is useful when the researcher wants to understand the role of the phenomenon in achieving the goal.

For Example, a researcher might conduct an instrumental case study on a particular policy to understand its impact on achieving a particular goal, such as reducing poverty. The researcher collects data from multiple sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents, and uses various techniques to analyze the data, such as content analysis or thematic analysis. The findings of an instrumental case study can be used to inform policy or practice or generate new research questions.

Case Study Data Collection Methods

Here are some common data collection methods for case studies:

Interviews involve asking questions to individuals who have knowledge or experience relevant to the case study. Interviews can be structured (where the same questions are asked to all participants) or unstructured (where the interviewer follows up on the responses with further questions). Interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing.

Observations

Observations involve watching and recording the behavior and activities of individuals or groups relevant to the case study. Observations can be participant (where the researcher actively participates in the activities) or non-participant (where the researcher observes from a distance). Observations can be recorded using notes, audio or video recordings, or photographs.

Documents can be used as a source of information for case studies. Documents can include reports, memos, emails, letters, and other written materials related to the case study. Documents can be collected from the case study participants or from public sources.

Surveys involve asking a set of questions to a sample of individuals relevant to the case study. Surveys can be administered in person, over the phone, through mail or email, or online. Surveys can be used to gather information on attitudes, opinions, or behaviors related to the case study.

Artifacts are physical objects relevant to the case study. Artifacts can include tools, equipment, products, or other objects that provide insights into the case study phenomenon.

How to conduct Case Study Research

Conducting a case study research involves several steps that need to be followed to ensure the quality and rigor of the study. Here are the steps to conduct case study research:

• Define the research questions: The first step in conducting a case study research is to define the research questions. The research questions should be specific, measurable, and relevant to the case study phenomenon under investigation.
• Select the case: The next step is to select the case or cases to be studied. The case should be relevant to the research questions and should provide rich and diverse data that can be used to answer the research questions.
• Collect data: Data can be collected using various methods, such as interviews, observations, documents, surveys, and artifacts. The data collection method should be selected based on the research questions and the nature of the case study phenomenon.
• Analyze the data: The data collected from the case study should be analyzed using various techniques, such as content analysis, thematic analysis, or grounded theory. The analysis should be guided by the research questions and should aim to provide insights and conclusions relevant to the research questions.
• Draw conclusions: The conclusions drawn from the case study should be based on the data analysis and should be relevant to the research questions. The conclusions should be supported by evidence and should be clearly stated.
• Validate the findings: The findings of the case study should be validated by reviewing the data and the analysis with participants or other experts in the field. This helps to ensure the validity and reliability of the findings.
• Write the report: The final step is to write the report of the case study research. The report should provide a clear description of the case study phenomenon, the research questions, the data collection methods, the data analysis, the findings, and the conclusions. The report should be written in a clear and concise manner and should follow the guidelines for academic writing.

Examples of Case Study

Here are some examples of case study research:

• The Hawthorne Studies : Conducted between 1924 and 1932, the Hawthorne Studies were a series of case studies conducted by Elton Mayo and his colleagues to examine the impact of work environment on employee productivity. The studies were conducted at the Hawthorne Works plant of the Western Electric Company in Chicago and included interviews, observations, and experiments.
• The Stanford Prison Experiment: Conducted in 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a case study conducted by Philip Zimbardo to examine the psychological effects of power and authority. The study involved simulating a prison environment and assigning participants to the role of guards or prisoners. The study was controversial due to the ethical issues it raised.
• The Challenger Disaster: The Challenger Disaster was a case study conducted to examine the causes of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986. The study included interviews, observations, and analysis of data to identify the technical, organizational, and cultural factors that contributed to the disaster.
• The Enron Scandal: The Enron Scandal was a case study conducted to examine the causes of the Enron Corporation’s bankruptcy in 2001. The study included interviews, analysis of financial data, and review of documents to identify the accounting practices, corporate culture, and ethical issues that led to the company’s downfall.
• The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster : The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was a case study conducted to examine the causes of the nuclear accident that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan in 2011. The study included interviews, analysis of data, and review of documents to identify the technical, organizational, and cultural factors that contributed to the disaster.

Application of Case Study

Case studies have a wide range of applications across various fields and industries. Here are some examples:

Business and Management

Case studies are widely used in business and management to examine real-life situations and develop problem-solving skills. Case studies can help students and professionals to develop a deep understanding of business concepts, theories, and best practices.

Case studies are used in healthcare to examine patient care, treatment options, and outcomes. Case studies can help healthcare professionals to develop critical thinking skills, diagnose complex medical conditions, and develop effective treatment plans.

Case studies are used in education to examine teaching and learning practices. Case studies can help educators to develop effective teaching strategies, evaluate student progress, and identify areas for improvement.

Social Sciences

Case studies are widely used in social sciences to examine human behavior, social phenomena, and cultural practices. Case studies can help researchers to develop theories, test hypotheses, and gain insights into complex social issues.

Law and Ethics

Case studies are used in law and ethics to examine legal and ethical dilemmas. Case studies can help lawyers, policymakers, and ethical professionals to develop critical thinking skills, analyze complex cases, and make informed decisions.

Purpose of Case Study

The purpose of a case study is to provide a detailed analysis of a specific phenomenon, issue, or problem in its real-life context. A case study is a qualitative research method that involves the in-depth exploration and analysis of a particular case, which can be an individual, group, organization, event, or community.

The primary purpose of a case study is to generate a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the case, including its history, context, and dynamics. Case studies can help researchers to identify and examine the underlying factors, processes, and mechanisms that contribute to the case and its outcomes. This can help to develop a more accurate and detailed understanding of the case, which can inform future research, practice, or policy.

Case studies can also serve other purposes, including:

• Illustrating a theory or concept: Case studies can be used to illustrate and explain theoretical concepts and frameworks, providing concrete examples of how they can be applied in real-life situations.
• Developing hypotheses: Case studies can help to generate hypotheses about the causal relationships between different factors and outcomes, which can be tested through further research.
• Providing insight into complex issues: Case studies can provide insights into complex and multifaceted issues, which may be difficult to understand through other research methods.
• Informing practice or policy: Case studies can be used to inform practice or policy by identifying best practices, lessons learned, or areas for improvement.

Advantages of Case Study Research

There are several advantages of case study research, including:

• In-depth exploration: Case study research allows for a detailed exploration and analysis of a specific phenomenon, issue, or problem in its real-life context. This can provide a comprehensive understanding of the case and its dynamics, which may not be possible through other research methods.
• Rich data: Case study research can generate rich and detailed data, including qualitative data such as interviews, observations, and documents. This can provide a nuanced understanding of the case and its complexity.
• Holistic perspective: Case study research allows for a holistic perspective of the case, taking into account the various factors, processes, and mechanisms that contribute to the case and its outcomes. This can help to develop a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the case.
• Theory development: Case study research can help to develop and refine theories and concepts by providing empirical evidence and concrete examples of how they can be applied in real-life situations.
• Practical application: Case study research can inform practice or policy by identifying best practices, lessons learned, or areas for improvement.
• Contextualization: Case study research takes into account the specific context in which the case is situated, which can help to understand how the case is influenced by the social, cultural, and historical factors of its environment.

Limitations of Case Study Research

There are several limitations of case study research, including:

• Limited generalizability : Case studies are typically focused on a single case or a small number of cases, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The unique characteristics of the case may not be applicable to other contexts or populations, which may limit the external validity of the research.
• Biased sampling: Case studies may rely on purposive or convenience sampling, which can introduce bias into the sample selection process. This may limit the representativeness of the sample and the generalizability of the findings.
• Subjectivity: Case studies rely on the interpretation of the researcher, which can introduce subjectivity into the analysis. The researcher’s own biases, assumptions, and perspectives may influence the findings, which may limit the objectivity of the research.
• Limited control: Case studies are typically conducted in naturalistic settings, which limits the control that the researcher has over the environment and the variables being studied. This may limit the ability to establish causal relationships between variables.
• Time-consuming: Case studies can be time-consuming to conduct, as they typically involve a detailed exploration and analysis of a specific case. This may limit the feasibility of conducting multiple case studies or conducting case studies in a timely manner.
• Resource-intensive: Case studies may require significant resources, including time, funding, and expertise. This may limit the ability of researchers to conduct case studies in resource-constrained settings.

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• Types of Structured Group Activities
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• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
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• Acknowledgments

A case study research paper examines a person, place, event, condition, phenomenon, or other type of subject of analysis in order to extrapolate  key themes and results that help predict future trends, illuminate previously hidden issues that can be applied to practice, and/or provide a means for understanding an important research problem with greater clarity. A case study research paper usually examines a single subject of analysis, but case study papers can also be designed as a comparative investigation that shows relationships between two or more subjects. The methods used to study a case can rest within a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method investigative paradigm.

Case Studies. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010 ; “What is a Case Study?” In Swanborn, Peter G. Case Study Research: What, Why and How? London: SAGE, 2010.

How to Approach Writing a Case Study Research Paper

General information about how to choose a topic to investigate can be found under the " Choosing a Research Problem " tab in the Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper writing guide. Review this page because it may help you identify a subject of analysis that can be investigated using a case study design.

However, identifying a case to investigate involves more than choosing the research problem . A case study encompasses a problem contextualized around the application of in-depth analysis, interpretation, and discussion, often resulting in specific recommendations for action or for improving existing conditions. As Seawright and Gerring note, practical considerations such as time and access to information can influence case selection, but these issues should not be the sole factors used in describing the methodological justification for identifying a particular case to study. Given this, selecting a case includes considering the following:

• The case represents an unusual or atypical example of a research problem that requires more in-depth analysis? Cases often represent a topic that rests on the fringes of prior investigations because the case may provide new ways of understanding the research problem. For example, if the research problem is to identify strategies to improve policies that support girl's access to secondary education in predominantly Muslim nations, you could consider using Azerbaijan as a case study rather than selecting a more obvious nation in the Middle East. Doing so may reveal important new insights into recommending how governments in other predominantly Muslim nations can formulate policies that support improved access to education for girls.
• The case provides important insight or illuminate a previously hidden problem? In-depth analysis of a case can be based on the hypothesis that the case study will reveal trends or issues that have not been exposed in prior research or will reveal new and important implications for practice. For example, anecdotal evidence may suggest drug use among homeless veterans is related to their patterns of travel throughout the day. Assuming prior studies have not looked at individual travel choices as a way to study access to illicit drug use, a case study that observes a homeless veteran could reveal how issues of personal mobility choices facilitate regular access to illicit drugs. Note that it is important to conduct a thorough literature review to ensure that your assumption about the need to reveal new insights or previously hidden problems is valid and evidence-based.
• The case challenges and offers a counter-point to prevailing assumptions? Over time, research on any given topic can fall into a trap of developing assumptions based on outdated studies that are still applied to new or changing conditions or the idea that something should simply be accepted as "common sense," even though the issue has not been thoroughly tested in current practice. A case study analysis may offer an opportunity to gather evidence that challenges prevailing assumptions about a research problem and provide a new set of recommendations applied to practice that have not been tested previously. For example, perhaps there has been a long practice among scholars to apply a particular theory in explaining the relationship between two subjects of analysis. Your case could challenge this assumption by applying an innovative theoretical framework [perhaps borrowed from another discipline] to explore whether this approach offers new ways of understanding the research problem. Taking a contrarian stance is one of the most important ways that new knowledge and understanding develops from existing literature.
• The case provides an opportunity to pursue action leading to the resolution of a problem? Another way to think about choosing a case to study is to consider how the results from investigating a particular case may result in findings that reveal ways in which to resolve an existing or emerging problem. For example, studying the case of an unforeseen incident, such as a fatal accident at a railroad crossing, can reveal hidden issues that could be applied to preventative measures that contribute to reducing the chance of accidents in the future. In this example, a case study investigating the accident could lead to a better understanding of where to strategically locate additional signals at other railroad crossings so as to better warn drivers of an approaching train, particularly when visibility is hindered by heavy rain, fog, or at night.
• The case offers a new direction in future research? A case study can be used as a tool for an exploratory investigation that highlights the need for further research about the problem. A case can be used when there are few studies that help predict an outcome or that establish a clear understanding about how best to proceed in addressing a problem. For example, after conducting a thorough literature review [very important!], you discover that little research exists showing the ways in which women contribute to promoting water conservation in rural communities of east central Africa. A case study of how women contribute to saving water in a rural village of Uganda can lay the foundation for understanding the need for more thorough research that documents how women in their roles as cooks and family caregivers think about water as a valuable resource within their community. This example of a case study could also point to the need for scholars to build new theoretical frameworks around the topic [e.g., applying feminist theories of work and family to the issue of water conservation].

Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. “Building Theories from Case Study Research.” Academy of Management Review 14 (October 1989): 532-550; Emmel, Nick. Sampling and Choosing Cases in Qualitative Research: A Realist Approach . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2013; Gerring, John. “What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good for?” American Political Science Review 98 (May 2004): 341-354; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Seawright, Jason and John Gerring. "Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research." Political Research Quarterly 61 (June 2008): 294-308.

Structure and Writing Style

The purpose of a paper in the social sciences designed around a case study is to thoroughly investigate a subject of analysis in order to reveal a new understanding about the research problem and, in so doing, contributing new knowledge to what is already known from previous studies. In applied social sciences disciplines [e.g., education, social work, public administration, etc.], case studies may also be used to reveal best practices, highlight key programs, or investigate interesting aspects of professional work.

In general, the structure of a case study research paper is not all that different from a standard college-level research paper. However, there are subtle differences you should be aware of. Here are the key elements to organizing and writing a case study research paper.

I.  Introduction

As with any research paper, your introduction should serve as a roadmap for your readers to ascertain the scope and purpose of your study . The introduction to a case study research paper, however, should not only describe the research problem and its significance, but you should also succinctly describe why the case is being used and how it relates to addressing the problem. The two elements should be linked. With this in mind, a good introduction answers these four questions:

• What is being studied? Describe the research problem and describe the subject of analysis [the case] you have chosen to address the problem. Explain how they are linked and what elements of the case will help to expand knowledge and understanding about the problem.
• Why is this topic important to investigate? Describe the significance of the research problem and state why a case study design and the subject of analysis that the paper is designed around is appropriate in addressing the problem.
• What did we know about this topic before I did this study? Provide background that helps lead the reader into the more in-depth literature review to follow. If applicable, summarize prior case study research applied to the research problem and why it fails to adequately address the problem. Describe why your case will be useful. If no prior case studies have been used to address the research problem, explain why you have selected this subject of analysis.
• How will this study advance new knowledge or new ways of understanding? Explain why your case study will be suitable in helping to expand knowledge and understanding about the research problem.

Each of these questions should be addressed in no more than a few paragraphs. Exceptions to this can be when you are addressing a complex research problem or subject of analysis that requires more in-depth background information.

II.  Literature Review

The literature review for a case study research paper is generally structured the same as it is for any college-level research paper. The difference, however, is that the literature review is focused on providing background information and  enabling historical interpretation of the subject of analysis in relation to the research problem the case is intended to address . This includes synthesizing studies that help to:

• Place relevant works in the context of their contribution to understanding the case study being investigated . This would involve summarizing studies that have used a similar subject of analysis to investigate the research problem. If there is literature using the same or a very similar case to study, you need to explain why duplicating past research is important [e.g., conditions have changed; prior studies were conducted long ago, etc.].
• Describe the relationship each work has to the others under consideration that informs the reader why this case is applicable . Your literature review should include a description of any works that support using the case to investigate the research problem and the underlying research questions.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research using the case study . If applicable, review any research that has examined the research problem using a different research design. Explain how your use of a case study design may reveal new knowledge or a new perspective or that can redirect research in an important new direction.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies . This refers to synthesizing any literature that points to unresolved issues of concern about the research problem and describing how the subject of analysis that forms the case study can help resolve these existing contradictions.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research . Your review should examine any literature that lays a foundation for understanding why your case study design and the subject of analysis around which you have designed your study may reveal a new way of approaching the research problem or offer a perspective that points to the need for additional research.
• Expose any gaps that exist in the literature that the case study could help to fill . Summarize any literature that not only shows how your subject of analysis contributes to understanding the research problem, but how your case contributes to a new way of understanding the problem that prior research has failed to do.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important!] . Collectively, your literature review should always place your case study within the larger domain of prior research about the problem. The overarching purpose of reviewing pertinent literature in a case study paper is to demonstrate that you have thoroughly identified and synthesized prior studies in relation to explaining the relevance of the case in addressing the research problem.

III.  Method

In this section, you explain why you selected a particular case [i.e., subject of analysis] and the strategy you used to identify and ultimately decide that your case was appropriate in addressing the research problem. The way you describe the methods used varies depending on the type of subject of analysis that constitutes your case study.

If your subject of analysis is an incident or event . In the social and behavioral sciences, the event or incident that represents the case to be studied is usually bounded by time and place, with a clear beginning and end and with an identifiable location or position relative to its surroundings. The subject of analysis can be a rare or critical event or it can focus on a typical or regular event. The purpose of studying a rare event is to illuminate new ways of thinking about the broader research problem or to test a hypothesis. Critical incident case studies must describe the method by which you identified the event and explain the process by which you determined the validity of this case to inform broader perspectives about the research problem or to reveal new findings. However, the event does not have to be a rare or uniquely significant to support new thinking about the research problem or to challenge an existing hypothesis. For example, Walo, Bull, and Breen conducted a case study to identify and evaluate the direct and indirect economic benefits and costs of a local sports event in the City of Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. The purpose of their study was to provide new insights from measuring the impact of a typical local sports event that prior studies could not measure well because they focused on large "mega-events." Whether the event is rare or not, the methods section should include an explanation of the following characteristics of the event: a) when did it take place; b) what were the underlying circumstances leading to the event; and, c) what were the consequences of the event in relation to the research problem.

If your subject of analysis is a person. Explain why you selected this particular individual to be studied and describe what experiences they have had that provide an opportunity to advance new understandings about the research problem. Mention any background about this person which might help the reader understand the significance of their experiences that make them worthy of study. This includes describing the relationships this person has had with other people, institutions, and/or events that support using them as the subject for a case study research paper. It is particularly important to differentiate the person as the subject of analysis from others and to succinctly explain how the person relates to examining the research problem [e.g., why is one politician in a particular local election used to show an increase in voter turnout from any other candidate running in the election]. Note that these issues apply to a specific group of people used as a case study unit of analysis [e.g., a classroom of students].

If your subject of analysis is a place. In general, a case study that investigates a place suggests a subject of analysis that is unique or special in some way and that this uniqueness can be used to build new understanding or knowledge about the research problem. A case study of a place must not only describe its various attributes relevant to the research problem [e.g., physical, social, historical, cultural, economic, political], but you must state the method by which you determined that this place will illuminate new understandings about the research problem. It is also important to articulate why a particular place as the case for study is being used if similar places also exist [i.e., if you are studying patterns of homeless encampments of veterans in open spaces, explain why you are studying Echo Park in Los Angeles rather than Griffith Park?]. If applicable, describe what type of human activity involving this place makes it a good choice to study [e.g., prior research suggests Echo Park has more homeless veterans].

If your subject of analysis is a phenomenon. A phenomenon refers to a fact, occurrence, or circumstance that can be studied or observed but with the cause or explanation to be in question. In this sense, a phenomenon that forms your subject of analysis can encompass anything that can be observed or presumed to exist but is not fully understood. In the social and behavioral sciences, the case usually focuses on human interaction within a complex physical, social, economic, cultural, or political system. For example, the phenomenon could be the observation that many vehicles used by ISIS fighters are small trucks with English language advertisements on them. The research problem could be that ISIS fighters are difficult to combat because they are highly mobile. The research questions could be how and by what means are these vehicles used by ISIS being supplied to the militants and how might supply lines to these vehicles be cut off? How might knowing the suppliers of these trucks reveal larger networks of collaborators and financial support? A case study of a phenomenon most often encompasses an in-depth analysis of a cause and effect that is grounded in an interactive relationship between people and their environment in some way.

NOTE:   The choice of the case or set of cases to study cannot appear random. Evidence that supports the method by which you identified and chose your subject of analysis should clearly support investigation of the research problem and linked to key findings from your literature review. Be sure to cite any studies that helped you determine that the case you chose was appropriate for examining the problem.

IV.  Discussion

The main elements of your discussion section are generally the same as any research paper, but centered around interpreting and drawing conclusions about the key findings from your analysis of the case study. Note that a general social sciences research paper may contain a separate section to report findings. However, in a paper designed around a case study, it is common to combine a description of the results with the discussion about their implications. The objectives of your discussion section should include the following:

Reiterate the Research Problem/State the Major Findings Briefly reiterate the research problem you are investigating and explain why the subject of analysis around which you designed the case study were used. You should then describe the findings revealed from your study of the case using direct, declarative, and succinct proclamation of the study results. Highlight any findings that were unexpected or especially profound.

Explain the Meaning of the Findings and Why They are Important Systematically explain the meaning of your case study findings and why you believe they are important. Begin this part of the section by repeating what you consider to be your most important or surprising finding first, then systematically review each finding. Be sure to thoroughly extrapolate what your analysis of the case can tell the reader about situations or conditions beyond the actual case that was studied while, at the same time, being careful not to misconstrue or conflate a finding that undermines the external validity of your conclusions.

Relate the Findings to Similar Studies No study in the social sciences is so novel or possesses such a restricted focus that it has absolutely no relation to previously published research. The discussion section should relate your case study results to those found in other studies, particularly if questions raised from prior studies served as the motivation for choosing your subject of analysis. This is important because comparing and contrasting the findings of other studies helps support the overall importance of your results and it highlights how and in what ways your case study design and the subject of analysis differs from prior research about the topic.

Consider Alternative Explanations of the Findings Remember that the purpose of social science research is to discover and not to prove. When writing the discussion section, you should carefully consider all possible explanations revealed by the case study results, rather than just those that fit your hypothesis or prior assumptions and biases. Be alert to what the in-depth analysis of the case may reveal about the research problem, including offering a contrarian perspective to what scholars have stated in prior research if that is how the findings can be interpreted from your case.

Acknowledge the Study's Limitations You can state the study's limitations in the conclusion section of your paper but describing the limitations of your subject of analysis in the discussion section provides an opportunity to identify the limitations and explain why they are not significant. This part of the discussion section should also note any unanswered questions or issues your case study could not address. More detailed information about how to document any limitations to your research can be found here .

Suggest Areas for Further Research Although your case study may offer important insights about the research problem, there are likely additional questions related to the problem that remain unanswered or findings that unexpectedly revealed themselves as a result of your in-depth analysis of the case. Be sure that the recommendations for further research are linked to the research problem and that you explain why your recommendations are valid in other contexts and based on the original assumptions of your study.

V.  Conclusion

As with any research paper, you should summarize your conclusion in clear, simple language; emphasize how the findings from your case study differs from or supports prior research and why. Do not simply reiterate the discussion section. Provide a synthesis of key findings presented in the paper to show how these converge to address the research problem. If you haven't already done so in the discussion section, be sure to document the limitations of your case study and any need for further research.

The function of your paper's conclusion is to: 1) reiterate the main argument supported by the findings from your case study; 2) state clearly the context, background, and necessity of pursuing the research problem using a case study design in relation to an issue, controversy, or a gap found from reviewing the literature; and, 3) provide a place to persuasively and succinctly restate the significance of your research problem, given that the reader has now been presented with in-depth information about the topic.

Consider the following points to help ensure your conclusion is appropriate:

• If the argument or purpose of your paper is complex, you may need to summarize these points for your reader.
• If prior to your conclusion, you have not yet explained the significance of your findings or if you are proceeding inductively, use the conclusion of your paper to describe your main points and explain their significance.
• Move from a detailed to a general level of consideration of the case study's findings that returns the topic to the context provided by the introduction or within a new context that emerges from your case study findings.

Note that, depending on the discipline you are writing in or the preferences of your professor, the concluding paragraph may contain your final reflections on the evidence presented as it applies to practice or on the essay's central research problem. However, the nature of being introspective about the subject of analysis you have investigated will depend on whether you are explicitly asked to express your observations in this way.

Problems to Avoid

Overgeneralization One of the goals of a case study is to lay a foundation for understanding broader trends and issues applied to similar circumstances. However, be careful when drawing conclusions from your case study. They must be evidence-based and grounded in the results of the study; otherwise, it is merely speculation. Looking at a prior example, it would be incorrect to state that a factor in improving girls access to education in Azerbaijan and the policy implications this may have for improving access in other Muslim nations is due to girls access to social media if there is no documentary evidence from your case study to indicate this. There may be anecdotal evidence that retention rates were better for girls who were engaged with social media, but this observation would only point to the need for further research and would not be a definitive finding if this was not a part of your original research agenda.

Failure to Document Limitations No case is going to reveal all that needs to be understood about a research problem. Therefore, just as you have to clearly state the limitations of a general research study , you must describe the specific limitations inherent in the subject of analysis. For example, the case of studying how women conceptualize the need for water conservation in a village in Uganda could have limited application in other cultural contexts or in areas where fresh water from rivers or lakes is plentiful and, therefore, conservation is understood more in terms of managing access rather than preserving access to a scarce resource.

Failure to Extrapolate All Possible Implications Just as you don't want to over-generalize from your case study findings, you also have to be thorough in the consideration of all possible outcomes or recommendations derived from your findings. If you do not, your reader may question the validity of your analysis, particularly if you failed to document an obvious outcome from your case study research. For example, in the case of studying the accident at the railroad crossing to evaluate where and what types of warning signals should be located, you failed to take into consideration speed limit signage as well as warning signals. When designing your case study, be sure you have thoroughly addressed all aspects of the problem and do not leave gaps in your analysis that leave the reader questioning the results.

Case Studies. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Gerring, John. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; Merriam, Sharan B. Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education . Rev. ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1998; Miller, Lisa L. “The Use of Case Studies in Law and Social Science Research.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 14 (2018): TBD; Mills, Albert J., Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Putney, LeAnn Grogan. "Case Study." In Encyclopedia of Research Design , Neil J. Salkind, editor. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010), pp. 116-120; Simons, Helen. Case Study Research in Practice . London: SAGE Publications, 2009;  Kratochwill,  Thomas R. and Joel R. Levin, editors. Single-Case Research Design and Analysis: New Development for Psychology and Education .  Hilldsale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992; Swanborn, Peter G. Case Study Research: What, Why and How? London : SAGE, 2010; Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research: Design and Methods . 6th edition. Los Angeles, CA, SAGE Publications, 2014; Walo, Maree, Adrian Bull, and Helen Breen. “Achieving Economic Benefits at Local Events: A Case Study of a Local Sports Event.” Festival Management and Event Tourism 4 (1996): 95-106.

Writing Tip

At Least Five Misconceptions about Case Study Research

Social science case studies are often perceived as limited in their ability to create new knowledge because they are not randomly selected and findings cannot be generalized to larger populations. Flyvbjerg examines five misunderstandings about case study research and systematically "corrects" each one. To quote, these are:

Misunderstanding 1 :  General, theoretical [context-independent] knowledge is more valuable than concrete, practical [context-dependent] knowledge. Misunderstanding 2 :  One cannot generalize on the basis of an individual case; therefore, the case study cannot contribute to scientific development. Misunderstanding 3 :  The case study is most useful for generating hypotheses; that is, in the first stage of a total research process, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building. Misunderstanding 4 :  The case study contains a bias toward verification, that is, a tendency to confirm the researcher’s preconceived notions. Misunderstanding 5 :  It is often difficult to summarize and develop general propositions and theories on the basis of specific case studies [p. 221].

While writing your paper, think introspectively about how you addressed these misconceptions because to do so can help you strengthen the validity and reliability of your research by clarifying issues of case selection, the testing and challenging of existing assumptions, the interpretation of key findings, and the summation of case outcomes. Think of a case study research paper as a complete, in-depth narrative about the specific properties and key characteristics of your subject of analysis applied to the research problem.

Flyvbjerg, Bent. “Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 12 (April 2006): 219-245.

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Case Study Research Method in Psychology

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. Typically, data is gathered from various sources using several methods (e.g., observations & interviews).

The case study research method originated in clinical medicine (the case history, i.e., the patient’s personal history). In psychology, case studies are often confined to the study of a particular individual.

The information is mainly biographical and relates to events in the individual’s past (i.e., retrospective), as well as to significant events that are currently occurring in his or her everyday life.

The case study is not a research method, but researchers select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate material suitable for case studies.

Freud (1909a, 1909b) conducted very detailed investigations into the private lives of his patients in an attempt to both understand and help them overcome their illnesses.

This makes it clear that the case study is a method that should only be used by a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, i.e., someone with a professional qualification.

There is an ethical issue of competence. Only someone qualified to diagnose and treat a person can conduct a formal case study relating to atypical (i.e., abnormal) behavior or atypical development.

 Famous Case Studies

• Anna O – One of the most famous case studies, documenting psychoanalyst Josef Breuer’s treatment of “Anna O” (real name Bertha Pappenheim) for hysteria in the late 1800s using early psychoanalytic theory.
• Little Hans – A child psychoanalysis case study published by Sigmund Freud in 1909 analyzing his five-year-old patient Herbert Graf’s house phobia as related to the Oedipus complex.
• Bruce/Brenda – Gender identity case of the boy (Bruce) whose botched circumcision led psychologist John Money to advise gender reassignment and raise him as a girl (Brenda) in the 1960s.
• Genie Wiley – Linguistics/psychological development case of the victim of extreme isolation abuse who was studied in 1970s California for effects of early language deprivation on acquiring speech later in life.
• Phineas Gage – One of the most famous neuropsychology case studies analyzes personality changes in railroad worker Phineas Gage after an 1848 brain injury involving a tamping iron piercing his skull.

Clinical Case Studies

• Studying the effectiveness of psychotherapy approaches with an individual patient
• Assessing and treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD
• Neuropsychological cases investigating brain injuries or disorders

Child Psychology Case Studies

• Studying psychological development from birth through adolescence
• Cases of learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD
• Effects of trauma, abuse, deprivation on development

Types of Case Studies

• Explanatory case studies : Used to explore causation in order to find underlying principles. Helpful for doing qualitative analysis to explain presumed causal links.
• Exploratory case studies : Used to explore situations where an intervention being evaluated has no clear set of outcomes. It helps define questions and hypotheses for future research.
• Descriptive case studies : Describe an intervention or phenomenon and the real-life context in which it occurred. It is helpful for illustrating certain topics within an evaluation.
• Multiple-case studies : Used to explore differences between cases and replicate findings across cases. Helpful for comparing and contrasting specific cases.
• Intrinsic : Used to gain a better understanding of a particular case. Helpful for capturing the complexity of a single case.
• Collective : Used to explore a general phenomenon using multiple case studies. Helpful for jointly studying a group of cases in order to inquire into the phenomenon.

Where Do You Find Data for a Case Study?

There are several places to find data for a case study. The key is to gather data from multiple sources to get a complete picture of the case and corroborate facts or findings through triangulation of evidence. Most of this information is likely qualitative (i.e., verbal description rather than measurement), but the psychologist might also collect numerical data.

1. Primary sources

• Interviews – Interviewing key people related to the case to get their perspectives and insights. The interview is an extremely effective procedure for obtaining information about an individual, and it may be used to collect comments from the person’s friends, parents, employer, workmates, and others who have a good knowledge of the person, as well as to obtain facts from the person him or herself.
• Observations – Observing behaviors, interactions, processes, etc., related to the case as they unfold in real-time.
• Documents & Records – Reviewing private documents, diaries, public records, correspondence, meeting minutes, etc., relevant to the case.

2. Secondary sources

• News/Media – News coverage of events related to the case study.
• Academic articles – Journal articles, dissertations etc. that discuss the case.
• Government reports – Official data and records related to the case context.
• Books/films – Books, documentaries or films discussing the case.

3. Archival records

Searching historical archives, museum collections and databases to find relevant documents, visual/audio records related to the case history and context.

Public archives like newspapers, organizational records, photographic collections could all include potentially relevant pieces of information to shed light on attitudes, cultural perspectives, common practices and historical contexts related to psychology.

4. Organizational records

Organizational records offer the advantage of often having large datasets collected over time that can reveal or confirm psychological insights.

Of course, privacy and ethical concerns regarding confidential data must be navigated carefully.

However, with proper protocols, organizational records can provide invaluable context and empirical depth to qualitative case studies exploring the intersection of psychology and organizations.

• Organizational/industrial psychology research : Organizational records like employee surveys, turnover/retention data, policies, incident reports etc. may provide insight into topics like job satisfaction, workplace culture and dynamics, leadership issues, employee behaviors etc.
• Clinical psychology : Therapists/hospitals may grant access to anonymized medical records to study aspects like assessments, diagnoses, treatment plans etc. This could shed light on clinical practices.
• School psychology : Studies could utilize anonymized student records like test scores, grades, disciplinary issues, and counseling referrals to study child development, learning barriers, effectiveness of support programs, and more.

How do I Write a Case Study in Psychology?

Follow specified case study guidelines provided by a journal or your psychology tutor. General components of clinical case studies include: background, symptoms, assessments, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. Interpreting the information means the researcher decides what to include or leave out. A good case study should always clarify which information is the factual description and which is an inference or the researcher’s opinion.

1. Introduction

• Provide background on the case context and why it is of interest, presenting background information like demographics, relevant history, and presenting problem.
• Compare briefly to similar published cases if applicable. Clearly state the focus/importance of the case.

2. Case Presentation

• Describe the presenting problem in detail, including symptoms, duration,and impact on daily life.
• Include client demographics like age and gender, information about social relationships, and mental health history.
• Describe all physical, emotional, and/or sensory symptoms reported by the client.
• Use patient quotes to describe the initial complaint verbatim. Follow with full-sentence summaries of relevant history details gathered, including key components that led to a working diagnosis.
• Summarize clinical exam results, namely orthopedic/neurological tests, imaging, lab tests, etc. Note actual results rather than subjective conclusions. Provide images if clearly reproducible/anonymized.
• Clearly state the working diagnosis or clinical impression before transitioning to management.

3. Management and Outcome

• Indicate the total duration of care and number of treatments given over what timeframe. Use specific names/descriptions for any therapies/interventions applied.
• Present the results of the intervention,including any quantitative or qualitative data collected.
• For outcomes, utilize visual analog scales for pain, medication usage logs, etc., if possible. Include patient self-reports of improvement/worsening of symptoms. Note the reason for discharge/end of care.

4. Discussion

• Analyze the case, exploring contributing factors, limitations of the study, and connections to existing research.
• Analyze the effectiveness of the intervention,considering factors like participant adherence, limitations of the study, and potential alternative explanations for the results.
• Identify any questions raised in the case analysis and relate insights to established theories and current research if applicable. Avoid definitive claims about physiological explanations.
• Offer clinical implications, and suggest future research directions.

5. Additional Items

• Thank specific assistants for writing support only. No patient acknowledgments.
• References should directly support any key claims or quotes included.
• Use tables/figures/images only if substantially informative. Include permissions and legends/explanatory notes.
• Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
• Provides insight for further research.
• Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.

Case studies allow a researcher to investigate a topic in far more detail than might be possible if they were trying to deal with a large number of research participants (nomothetic approach) with the aim of ‘averaging’.

Because of their in-depth, multi-sided approach, case studies often shed light on aspects of human thinking and behavior that would be unethical or impractical to study in other ways.

Research that only looks into the measurable aspects of human behavior is not likely to give us insights into the subjective dimension of experience, which is important to psychoanalytic and humanistic psychologists.

Case studies are often used in exploratory research. They can help us generate new ideas (that might be tested by other methods). They are an important way of illustrating theories and can help show how different aspects of a person’s life are related to each other.

The method is, therefore, important for psychologists who adopt a holistic point of view (i.e., humanistic psychologists ).

Limitations

• Lacking scientific rigor and providing little basis for generalization of results to the wider population.
• Researchers’ own subjective feelings may influence the case study (researcher bias).
• Difficult to replicate.
• Time-consuming and expensive.
• The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted the depth of analysis that was possible within the available resources.

Because a case study deals with only one person/event/group, we can never be sure if the case study investigated is representative of the wider body of “similar” instances. This means the conclusions drawn from a particular case may not be transferable to other settings.

Because case studies are based on the analysis of qualitative (i.e., descriptive) data , a lot depends on the psychologist’s interpretation of the information she has acquired.

This means that there is a lot of scope for Anna O , and it could be that the subjective opinions of the psychologist intrude in the assessment of what the data means.

For example, Freud has been criticized for producing case studies in which the information was sometimes distorted to fit particular behavioral theories (e.g., Little Hans ).

This is also true of Money’s interpretation of the Bruce/Brenda case study (Diamond, 1997) when he ignored evidence that went against his theory.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895).  Studies on hysteria . Standard Edition 2: London.

Curtiss, S. (1981). Genie: The case of a modern wild child .

Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, K. (1997). Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , 151(3), 298-304

Freud, S. (1909a). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306

Freud, S. (1909b). Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose (Der “Rattenmann”). Jb. psychoanal. psychopathol. Forsch ., I, p. 357-421; GW, VII, p. 379-463; Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis, SE , 10: 151-318.

Harlow J. M. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head.  Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 39 , 389–393.

Harlow, J. M. (1868).  Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head .  Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 2  (3), 327-347.

Money, J., & Ehrhardt, A. A. (1972).  Man & Woman, Boy & Girl : The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Money, J., & Tucker, P. (1975). Sexual signatures: On being a man or a woman.

Further Information

• Case Study Approach
• Case Study Method
• Enhancing the Quality of Case Studies in Health Services Research
• “We do things together” A case study of “couplehood” in dementia
• Using mixed methods for evaluating an integrative approach to cancer care: a case study

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Definition of case study

Examples of case study in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'case study.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1914, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Dictionary Entries Near case study

case spring

case study method

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“Case study.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/case%20study. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.

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Case study definition

Case study, a term which some of you may know from the "Case Study of Vanitas" anime and manga, is a thorough examination of a particular subject, such as a person, group, location, occasion, establishment, phenomena, etc. They are most frequently utilized in research of business, medicine, education and social behaviour. There are a different types of case studies that researchers might use:

• Collective case studies

• Descriptive case studies

• Explanatory case studies

• Exploratory case studies

• Instrumental case studies

• Intrinsic case studies

Case studies are usually much more sophisticated and professional than regular essays and courseworks, as they require a lot of verified data, are research-oriented and not necessarily designed to be read by the general public.

How to write a case study?

It very much depends on the topic of your case study, as a medical case study and a coffee business case study have completely different sources, outlines, target demographics, etc. But just for this example, let's outline a coffee roaster case study. Firstly, it's likely going to be a problem-solving case study, like most in the business and economics field are. Here are some tips for these types of case studies:

• Your case scenario should be precisely defined in terms of your unique assessment criteria.

• Determine the primary issues by analyzing the scenario. Think about how they connect to the main ideas and theories in your piece.

• Find and investigate any theories or methods that might be relevant to your case.

• Keep your audience in mind. Exactly who are your stakeholder(s)? If writing a case study on coffee roasters, it's probably gonna be suppliers, landlords, investors, customers, etc.

• Indicate the best solution(s) and how they should be implemented. Make sure your suggestions are grounded in pertinent theories and useful resources, as well as being realistic, practical, and attainable.

• Carefully proofread your case study. Keep in mind these four principles when editing: clarity, honesty, reality and relevance.

Are there any online services that could write a case study for me?

Luckily, there are!

We completely understand and have been ourselves in a position, where we couldn't wrap our head around how to write an effective and useful case study, but don't fear - our service is here.

We are a group that specializes in writing all kinds of case studies and other projects for academic customers and business clients who require assistance with its creation. We require our writers to have a degree in your topic and carefully interview them before they can join our team, as we try to ensure quality above all. We cover a great range of topics, offer perfect quality work, always deliver on time and aim to leave our customers completely satisfied with what they ordered.

The ordering process is fully online, and it goes as follows:

• Select the topic and the deadline of your case study.

• Provide us with any details, requirements, statements that should be emphasized or particular parts of the writing process you struggle with.

• Leave the email address, where your completed order will be sent to.

• Select your payment type, sit back and relax!

With lots of experience on the market, professionally degreed writers, online 24/7 customer support and incredibly low prices, you won't find a service offering a better deal than ours.

Blog The Education Hub

https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/20/gcse-results-day-2024-number-grading-system/

GCSE results day 2024: Everything you need to know including the number grading system

Thousands of students across the country will soon be finding out their GCSE results and thinking about the next steps in their education.   

Here we explain everything you need to know about the big day, from when results day is, to the current 9-1 grading scale, to what your options are if your results aren’t what you’re expecting.  

When is GCSE results day 2024?  

GCSE results day will be taking place on Thursday the 22 August.     

The results will be made available to schools on Wednesday and available to pick up from your school by 8am on Thursday morning.  

Schools will issue their own instructions on how and when to collect your results.   

When did we change to a number grading scale?  

The shift to the numerical grading system was introduced in England in 2017 firstly in English language, English literature, and maths.  

By 2020 all subjects were shifted to number grades. This means anyone with GCSE results from 2017-2020 will have a combination of both letters and numbers.  

The numerical grading system was to signal more challenging GCSEs and to better differentiate between students’ abilities - particularly at higher grades between the A *-C grades. There only used to be 4 grades between A* and C, now with the numerical grading scale there are 6.  

What do the number grades mean?  

The grades are ranked from 1, the lowest, to 9, the highest.  

The grades don’t exactly translate, but the two grading scales meet at three points as illustrated below.  

The bottom of grade 7 is aligned with the bottom of grade A, while the bottom of grade 4 is aligned to the bottom of grade C.    

Meanwhile, the bottom of grade 1 is aligned to the bottom of grade G.  

What to do if your results weren’t what you were expecting?  

If your results weren’t what you were expecting, firstly don’t panic. You have options.  

First things first, speak to your school or college – they could be flexible on entry requirements if you’ve just missed your grades.   

They’ll also be able to give you the best tailored advice on whether re-sitting while studying for your next qualifications is a possibility.   

If you’re really unhappy with your results you can enter to resit all GCSE subjects in summer 2025. You can also take autumn exams in GCSE English language and maths.  

Speak to your sixth form or college to decide when it’s the best time for you to resit a GCSE exam.  

Look for other courses with different grade requirements     

Entry requirements vary depending on the college and course. Ask your school for advice, and call your college or another one in your area to see if there’s a space on a course you’re interested in.    

Consider an apprenticeship    

Apprenticeships combine a practical training job with study too. They’re open to you if you’re 16 or over, living in England, and not in full time education.  

As an apprentice you’ll be a paid employee, have the opportunity to work alongside experienced staff, gain job-specific skills, and get time set aside for training and study related to your role.   

You can find out more about how to apply here .  

Talk to a National Careers Service (NCS) adviser    

The National Career Service is a free resource that can help you with your career planning. Give them a call to discuss potential routes into higher education, further education, or the workplace.   

Whatever your results, if you want to find out more about all your education and training options, as well as get practical advice about your exam results, visit the  National Careers Service page  and Skills for Careers to explore your study and work choices.   

You may also be interested in:

• Results day 2024: What's next after picking up your A level, T level and VTQ results?
• When is results day 2024? GCSEs, A levels, T Levels and VTQs

Tags: GCSE grade equivalent , gcse number grades , GCSE results , gcse results day 2024 , gsce grades old and new , new gcse grades

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DNA search prompts arrest of Idaho murder suspect in 51-year-old cold case, California police say

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BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho man has been arrested in connection with the shooting death of a woman in California more than 50 years ago, authorities said.

DNA evidence led investigators to identify Michael Eugene Mullen, 75, as a suspect in the death of Nina “Nadine” Fischer in 1973, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said. Mullen was arrested near Salmon, Idaho, on Wednesday, and he is being held in jail while awaiting extradition to California.

Mullen’s defense attorney, Dan Brown, did not immediately respond to voice and email messages left for him on Saturday.

Fischer lived in San Rafael, California, with her husband and young daughter when the 31-year-old was killed in November 1973, the Marin County Sheriff’s office said in a news release. Both Fischer and her husband were Swedish nationals, and they were preparing to move back to Sweden at the time.

Fischer’s husband found her body when he returned home from work. She had been sexually assaulted and shot three times, and her 2-year-old child was found unharmed in another room.

Law enforcement officials questioned some witnesses — including movers and an assessor who had been at the house that day — but the investigation turned up no leads and the case went cold, according to newspaper articles published after her death.

In 2021, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office sent the case to the California Department of Justice’s Familial Search Program. The program compares DNA from crime scenes to a DNA database in an effort to try to find relatives of a potential suspect. After several months, the DNA resulted in a possible lead, and after three more years of investigation Mullen was identified as the suspect, the sheriff’s office said.

The Marin County District Attorney’s office and sheriff’s office worked with the Idaho State Police and the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office to arrest Mullen on suspicion of murder. He is being held in the Lemhi County jail.

Thwaites Glacier won’t collapse like dominoes as feared, study finds, but that doesn’t mean the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is stable

Professor of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College

Disclosure statement

Mathieu Morlighem receives funding from NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Heising Simons Foundation, and Dartmouth College.

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Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier got its nickname the “ Doomsday Glacier ” for its potential to flood coastlines around the world if it collapsed. It is already contributing about 4% of annual sea-level rise as it loses ice, and one theory suggests the glacier could soon begin to collapse into the ocean like a row of dominoes.

But is that kind of rapid collapse really as likely as feared? A new study of Thwaites Glacier’s susceptibility to what’s known as marine ice cliff instability offers some hope. But the findings don’t mean Thwaites is stable.

Polar scientist Mathieu Morlighem , who led the study, explains the results.

Why is the Thwaites Glacier so important?

Thwaites Glacier drains a huge area of Antarctica’s ice sheet – about 74,000 square miles (192,000 square kilometers), an expanse bigger than Florida. If a snowflake falls within that drainage system, it will eventually end up as part of an iceberg in the ocean off Thwaites.

What we are seeing with Thwaites Glacier right now is a disaster in slow motion.

The bedrock under Thwaites Glacier sits below sea level and slopes downward going inland , so the glacier gets deeper toward the interior of the ice sheet. Once the glacier begins losing more ice than it gains from new snowfall and starts to retreat, it’s very hard to slow it down because of this slope. And Thwaites is already retreating at an accelerating rate as the climate warms.

Thwaites Glacier holds enough ice to raise global sea level by more than 2 feet (0.65 meters). Once Thwaites starts to destabilize, it also will destabilize neighboring glaciers . So, what happens to Thwaites affects all of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and that affects sea-level rise along coastlines everywhere.

What is marine ice cliff instability?

Marine ice cliff instability is a relatively new concept proposed by scientists in the past decade.

Many of the glaciers around Antarctica have huge floating extensions called ice shelves that buttress the glacier and slow its ice flow into the ocean. With the climate warming, we have seen some of these floating extensions collapse, sometimes very rapidly , in the span of a few weeks or months.

If Thwaites’ ice shelf were to collapse, it would expose a very tall ice cliff facing the ocean along its 75-mile (120-kilometer) front . There is only so much force that ice can sustain, so if the cliff is too tall, it will collapse into the ocean.

Once that happens, a new ice cliff farther back would be exposed, and the new cliff would be even taller because it is farther inland. The theory of marine ice cliff instability suggests that if the cliffs collapse quickly enough, that could have a domino effect of ever-higher ice cliffs collapsing one after the other.

However, no one has observed marine ice cliff instability in action. We don’t know if it will happen, because a lot depends on how quickly the ice collapses.

What did you discover about the risk to Thwaites?

When the theory of marine ice cliff instability was first introduced, it used a rough approximation of how ice cliffs might collapse once the ice shelf was gone.

Studies since then have determined that ice cliffs won’t fail systematically until the ice is about 442 feet (135 meters) high. Even at that point, they would fail more slowly than projected until they became much taller.

We used three high-resolution models to explore what this new physical understanding of ice cliff instability would mean for Thwaites Glacier this century.

Our results show that if Thwaites’ entire ice shelf collapsed today, its ice front would not rapidly retreat inland due to marine ice cliff instability alone. Without the ice shelf, the glacier’s ice would flow much faster toward the ocean, thinning the front of the glacier. As a result, the ice cliffs wouldn’t be as high.

We found that Thwaites would remain fairly stable at least through 2100. We also simulated an ice shelf collapse in 50 years, when the glacier’s grounding line – where its grounded ice meets the ocean – would have retreated deeper inland. Even then, we found that marine ice cliff instability alone would not cause a rapid retreat.

The results call into question some recent estimates of just how fast Thwaites might collapse. That includes a worst-case scenario that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mentioned in its latest assessment report but labeled as “low likelihood.”

Thwaites is the glacier everyone is worried about. If you model the entire ice sheet, this is where marine ice cliff instability starts and where it propagates far inland . So, if Thwaites isn’t as vulnerable to ice cliff failure as we thought, that’s a good sign for the entire ice sheet.

But marine ice cliff instability is only one mechanism of ice loss. This finding doesn’t mean Thwaites is stable.

What else is causing glaciers to retreat at an accelerating rate?

There are many processes that make the Antarctic ice sheet unstable, some of them very well understood.

Ice-ocean interactions explain most of the recent ice mass loss so far. Antarctica is a very cold place , so atmospheric warming isn’t having a large effect yet. But warm ocean currents are getting under the ice shelves, and they are thinning the ice from below , which weakens the ice shelves. When that happens, the ice streams flow faster because there is less resistance.

Over the past few decades , the Amundsen Sea sector, where Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers are located, has seen an intrusion of warm water from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which has been melting the ice from below .

What does climate change have to do with it?

Antarctica can seem like a faraway place, but human activities that warm the planet – such as burning fossil fuels – are having dramatic effects at the poles. Ice loss contributes to sea-level rise, affecting coastal regions around the world.

People’s choices today will determine how quickly the water rises.

• Climate change
• Sea level rise
• West Antarctic ice sheet
• Antarctic ice sheet
• Thwaites glacier

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This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:

Published on 26.8.2024 in Vol 26 (2024)

Evaluation of a Natural Language Processing Approach to Identify Diagnostic Errors and Analysis of Safety Learning System Case Review Data: Retrospective Cohort Study

Authors of this article:

Original Paper

• Azade Tabaie 1, 2 , PhD   ; 
• Alberta Tran 3 , RN, CCRN, PhD   ; 
• Tony Calabria 3 , MA, CPHQ, CSSBB   ; 
• Sonita S Bennett 1 , MSc   ; 
• Arianna Milicia 4 , BSc   ; 
• William Weintraub 5, 6 , MACC, MD   ; 
• William James Gallagher 6, 7 , MD   ; 
• John Yosaitis 6, 8 , MD   ; 
• Laura C Schubel 4 , MPH   ; 
• Mary A Hill 9, 10 , MS   ; 
• Kelly Michelle Smith 9, 10 , PhD   ; 
• Kristen Miller 4, 6 , MSPH, MSL, CPPS, DrPH  

1 Center for Biostatistics, Informatics, and Data Science, MedStar Health Research Institute, Washington, DC, United States

2 Department of Emergency Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, United States

3 Department of Quality and Safety, MedStar Health Research Institute, Washington, DC, United States

4 National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, MedStar Health Research Institute, Washington, DC, United States

5 Population Health, MedStar Health Research Institute, Washington, DC, United States

6 Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, United States

7 Family Medicine Residency Program, MedStar Health Georgetown-Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, United States

8 MedStar Simulation Training & Education Lab (SiTEL), MedStar Institute for Innovation, Washington, DC, United States

9 Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

10 Michael Garron Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Azade Tabaie, PhD

Center for Biostatistics, Informatics, and Data Science

MedStar Health Research Institute

3007 Tilden Street NW

Washington, DC, 20008

United States

Phone: 1 202 244 9810

Email: [email protected]

Background: Diagnostic errors are an underappreciated cause of preventable mortality in hospitals and pose a risk for severe patient harm and increase hospital length of stay.

Objective: This study aims to explore the potential of machine learning and natural language processing techniques in improving diagnostic safety surveillance. We conducted a rigorous evaluation of the feasibility and potential to use electronic health records clinical notes and existing case review data.

Methods: Safety Learning System case review data from 1 large health system composed of 10 hospitals in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States from February 2016 to September 2021 were analyzed. The case review outcome included opportunities for improvement including diagnostic opportunities for improvement. To supplement case review data, electronic health record clinical notes were extracted and analyzed. A simple logistic regression model along with 3 forms of logistic regression models (ie, Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator, Ridge, and Elastic Net) with regularization functions was trained on this data to compare classification performances in classifying patients who experienced diagnostic errors during hospitalization. Further, statistical tests were conducted to find significant differences between female and male patients who experienced diagnostic errors.

Results: In total, 126 (7.4%) patients (of 1704) had been identified by case reviewers as having experienced at least 1 diagnostic error. Patients who had experienced diagnostic error were grouped by sex: 59 (7.1%) of the 830 women and 67 (7.7%) of the 874 men. Among the patients who experienced a diagnostic error, female patients were older (median 72, IQR 66-80 vs median 67, IQR 57-76; P =.02), had higher rates of being admitted through general or internal medicine (69.5% vs 47.8%; P =.01), lower rates of cardiovascular-related admitted diagnosis (11.9% vs 28.4%; P =.02), and lower rates of being admitted through neurology department (2.3% vs 13.4%; P =.04). The Ridge model achieved the highest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (0.885), specificity (0.797), positive predictive value (PPV; 0.24), and F 1 -score (0.369) in classifying patients who were at higher risk of diagnostic errors among hospitalized patients.

Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that natural language processing can be a potential solution to more effectively identifying and selecting potential diagnostic error cases for review and therefore reducing the case review burden.

Introduction

Diagnostic errors are an underappreciated cause of preventable mortality in hospitals, estimated to affect a quarter million hospital inpatients, and account for an estimated 40,000-80,000 deaths annually in the United States [ 1 ]. These errors pose a risk for severe patient harm [ 2 , 3 ], increase hospital length of stay [ 4 ], and made up 22% and accounted for US $5.7 billion of paid malpractice claims in hospitalized patients throughout a nearly 13-year period [ 5 ]. In their analysis of malpractice claims occurring in the US National Practitioner Database from 1999 to 2011, Gupta et al [ 5 ] found that diagnosis-related paid claims were most likely to be associated with death and cost (following surgery); among diagnosis-related paid claims, failure to diagnose was the most common subtype and was more likely than other types to be associated with mortality. Several factors have been proposed as contributors to inpatient diagnostic errors including time constraints related to the concurrent care of multiple patients, unpredictable workflows, distractions, and competing priorities for trainees. From their systematic review and meta-analysis, Gunderson et al [ 2 ] estimate that 250,000 diagnostic adverse events occur annually among hospitalized patients in the United States, and this is likely an underestimation of the problem due to several challenges in diagnostic error measurement [ 6 ].

Challenges in identifying and measuring diagnostic errors occur due to the evolving and iterative nature of the diagnostic process, making it difficult to determine when, if at all, a correct or more specific diagnosis could have been established by clinicians to start the appropriate treatment [ 6 ]. Since its landmark report, Improving Diagnosis in Health Care , the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has produced a common understanding of diagnostic error that includes accuracy, timeliness, and communication of the explanation to the patient or patient’s family member [ 3 ]. Diagnostic errors often involve missed opportunities related to various aspects of the diagnostic process [ 7 - 9 ] and diagnostic adverse events resulting in harm [ 10 ]. However, many hospitals currently do not capture or include surveillance for diagnostic errors, despite having robust systems in place to report and analyze patient safety issues [ 6 , 11 , 12 ].

A crucial first step to improving diagnosis in hospitals is the creation of programs to identify, analyze, and learn from diagnostic errors. Ongoing efforts by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality have supported pragmatic measurement approaches for health organizations to build a diagnostic safety program and identify and learn from diagnostic errors such as those described in the Measure Dx resource [ 9 ]. One proposed and promising solution for hospitals to improve diagnostic surveillance is to build on existing efforts to collect patient safety data, root cause analyses, or other forms of case reviews for quality improvement purposes. Cases that have already been reviewed or investigated in the organization for general patient safety and quality purposes may be able to inform or be rereviewed for information and learning opportunities specific to diagnostic safety. Widely used case-based learning methodologies in particular, such as the “Learning From Every Death” initiative developed at Mayo Clinic [ 13 ] used both nationally and worldwide, offer an excellent opportunity for hospitals to augment their existing quality and safety efforts and support diagnostic safety.

Clinical notes in electronic health records (EHRs) written by health providers in free-text format are rich sources of a patient’s diagnoses and care trajectory through hospitalization time. Approaches to processing free text, such as through natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), have demonstrated significant opportunities to improve quality and safety within health care organizations in diverse applications [ 14 - 16 ] such as cancer research [ 17 , 18 ] and infection prediction [ 19 ] to sleep issues [ 20 ] and neurological outcome prediction [ 21 ]. Besides its use in the diagnostic process, ML models proved to have added benefits when used in diagnostic error identification [ 22 , 23 ]. However, despite significant progress and evidence about the use of these ML and NLP approaches to improve patient safety, the use of ML and NLP approaches to diagnostic safety and surveillance has largely remained untapped. A 2022 study demonstrates how an academic medical center’s implementation of an NLP-based algorithm to flag safety event reports for manual review enabled early detection of emerging diagnostic risks from large volumes of safety reports, and was among the first to apply an NLP approach to safety event reports to facilitate identification of COVID-19 related diagnostic errors [ 24 ]. Meanwhile, progress in the use of data mining approaches to develop electronic trigger tools offers promising methods to detect potential diagnostic events, promote organizational learning, and support the monitoring of data prospectively to identify patients at high risk for future adverse events [ 25 ]. To our knowledge, however, NLP has not yet been applied to case review data to facilitate the identification of diagnostic errors and understand its features and sources.

While free-text formatted clinical notes provide unique opportunities to incorporate ML models, the lack of reliable labels to represent diagnostic errors often limits the use of clinical notes for diagnostic safety surveillance efforts. The opportunity to train ML and NLP algorithms to identify diagnostic errors and opportunities depends on the collation of EHR data with existing efforts to identify diagnostic errors such as through case review findings from the Safety Learning System (SLS). To further explore the potential for this approach to be used to improve diagnostic safety surveillance, a rigorous evaluation of the feasibility and potential of using EHR and existing case review data is needed.

We hypothesized that ML and NLP methods can be applied to train models based on available case review data to examine content potentially related to diagnostic errors within EHR clinical notes. These approaches automatically identify features or information from free text using controlled vocabularies, rule sets, reference dictionaries, or lexicons.

Data Sets and Case Review Approach

We analyzed SLS data from 1 large health system comprised of 10 hospitals in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The SLS is one example of a holistic case review methodology delivered by health care organizations in the United States and globally. Established in 2015, the SLS builds upon the Mayo Clinic Mortality Review System of Huddleston et al [ 13 ] to review and analyze EHR data from patient mortality cases to find safety issues that could be found and mitigated. This approach was designed to enhance current quality improvement projects done within health organizations, providing a perspective and strategy based on the Safety II lens and rooted in the belief that every death provides an opportunity to improve care. With a Safety II lens, participating organizations use a holistic case review methodology designed to identify vulnerabilities in systems and processes of care delivery. Reviewers identify and translate these into different categories and labels to (1) define and quantify types of process of care and system failures contributing to adverse outcomes (errors) and (2) identify the components of the process of care and system failures that when fixed will improve performance (opportunities for improvement [OFIs]).

To ensure a sufficient cross-sampling of patients across different specialties and areas, patients are selected for case reviews at this health system based on their primary provider service line category (eg, medicine, surgery, etc) and hospital length of stay; patients in primary and ambulatory care settings are not included for case review selection. The case review process occurs according to the standardized SLS methodology and recommendations [ 13 , 26 ], and between at least 1 physician and 1 nurse within the health system who have both received training in the SLS approach. The case review outcome and identification of OFIs, including diagnostic OFIs, relies on the reviewer’s consensus of any findings and through multiple multidisciplinary and multispecialty meetings that may involve a committee Chair member, clinical department leader, or escalation to other leadership.

We obtained SLS data from February 2016 to September 2021; data in later years were available but not included because of key changes to the case selection process made during and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All hospitalized adult patients older than 18 years were included for analysis, regardless of their hospitalization outcome (eg, mortality or discharge location). Pediatric and neonatal patients were excluded.

Ethical Considerations

The original data collection and study protocol was approved by the institutional review board (00001245) at MedStar Health Research Institute on August 26, 2019.

Data Extraction

Medical record number, encounter number, length of stay, age, date of birth, sex, diagnosis at the time of admission (ie, ICD-10 [ International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision ] diagnosis codes), mortality, OFI categories (eg, delayed or missed diagnosis and diagnostic opportunities), number of identified OFIs and diagnosis issues (eg, the accuracy of diagnosis and confirmation or fixation bias) were the features and patient identifiers which were extracted from SLS data [ 13 , 26 ].

Because chart reviews generally occur at a single point in time within the patient’s care trajectory, they often do not contain information or details of the patient’s full hospital course. However, clinical notes written by health care providers are rich sources of patient’s health status throughout their hospitalization period [ 27 - 29 ]. Therefore, to supplement these chart review data, we additionally extracted and included all clinical notes from the EHR for patients who could be matched by patient identifiers (eg, encounter number and date of birth).

Coding Diagnostic Errors

Case reviewers can select any number of labels to describe a diagnosis issue or an OFI identified and agreed upon by consensus. For this study, diagnostic errors were defined by the available features from chart review pertaining to diagnosis and impacting the timeliness, accuracy, or communication of a diagnosis. Our definition of diagnostic errors was limited to the categories identified during chart reviews and recorded within the SLS data set; therefore, our diagnostic error definition does not include all aspects of the definition developed by the NASEM report [ 3 ]. Table 1 describes the SLS categories and values that were labeled as diagnostic errors and used to train our classification models. Patients were coded as having experienced a diagnostic error if one or more of the conditions listed in Table 1 were identified in their SLS case review.

a OFI: opportunity for improvement.

NLP Approach

We used an NLP approach on critical incident reporting system data to explore the features and risk of diagnostic error among hospitalized patients.

Features From Free-Text Data

Descriptive statistical analyses were performed to identify any differences among age, length of stay, and mortality between the female and male patients who had experienced diagnostic errors.

All EHR clinical notes were transformed to lowercase. Extra white spaces, numbers, punctuations, and stop words were removed and words were stemmed. The term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) matrix was calculated for each clinical note using the bag-of-words from the preprocessed EHR clinical notes [ 30 ]. TF-IDF is a statistical measure that evaluates how relevant a word is to a document in a collection of documents and is a popular method to translate free text to numerical features in training ML models. The TF-IDF of a word in a document is calculated by multiplying 2 metrics: the number of times a word appeared in a document and the inverse document frequency of the word across a set of documents. TF-IDF is computationally efficient and easy to interpret. We excluded the most frequent words that had appeared in more than 95% of the EHR clinical notes, as these frequent words do not provide information to help with the classification. Moreover, we excluded the rare words that appeared in less than 5% of the EHR clinical notes [ 31 ].

In a TF-IDF matrix, the number of rows corresponds to the unique patients, and the number of columns represents the unique words found in EHR clinical notes. There are numerous unique words used in EHR clinical notes; therefore, the TF-IDF approach provides a high-dimensional input matrix for the classification task. The high-dimensional input matrix can lead to training inaccurate classifiers. To overcome that issue, we used the chi-square statistical test to select the most relevant words to identify diagnostic errors; therefore, if P values associated with a word (also called a feature) are less than .05, that word is selected and included in the feature matrix to train ML classification models.

Classification Models

In lieu of an existing model with the same objective in the literature, a simple logistic regression model was trained as the baseline classifier to identify patients within SLS data who were at higher risk of diagnostic error. Moreover, 3 forms of logistic regression models with regularization functions were trained on this data to compare classification performances and identify the best-performing model [ 32 ]: Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), Ridge, and Elastic Net.

• LASSO: for a more accurate prediction, LASSO regularization is used with a logistic regression model. The LASSO procedure encourages simple, sparse models which has fewer parameters in a way that the estimated coefficient of features with less effect will be set to zero. This characteristic makes LASSO well-suited for models showing high levels of multicollinearity or variable selection and parameter elimination is needed. LASSO is also called L1 regularization.
• Ridge: also called L2 regularization, Ridge is a regularization method used for models suffering from multicollinearity or high-dimensional feature space. Ridge regularization keeps all the features regardless of their effect on the model. However, it pushes the estimated coefficient of features with less effect toward zero to minimize their effect on the classification outcome. This characteristic of Ridge makes it well-suited when most features impact the outcome variable.
• Elastic Net: a logistic regression model with Elastic Net regularization is a weighted combination of LASSO (L1) and Ridge (L2) regularizations [ 33 ]. Elastic Net can remove the effect of the insignificant features by setting their estimated coefficient to zero and lower the effect of the less significant features by pushing their estimated coefficient toward zero while adding more weights to the more important features. From implementation and interpretation aspects, the Elastic Net model is simple to use. Such characteristics make this model an accepted baseline in ML-based studies [ 34 ].

The hyperparameters of the 3 classification models were optimized through cross-validation. All the analyses were conducted using Python 3 (Python Software Foundation).

Classification Performance Metrics

We calculated 7 common performance metrics reported for binary classifiers to compare the performance of the 4 classification models: area under receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC), sensitivity or recall or true positive rate, specificity or true negative rate, positive predictive value (PPV) or precision, negative predictive value (NPV), F 1 -score, and area under precision-recall curve (AUPRC). The 7 metrics take values between 0 and 1. Values closer to 1 indicate a well-performing classifier. Multimedia Appendix 1 presents the definition of the performance metrics used in this study. Figure 1 presents the summary of the methods used in this analysis.

Descriptive Summary

In total, there were 2184 unique patient records within SLS data from February 2016 to September 2021. EHR clinical notes were cross-matched, extracted, and included in analyses for 1704 (78%) of these SLS patient records. Of those patients with cross-matched EHR data, 126 (7.4%) patients had been identified by case reviewers as having experienced at least 1 diagnostic error. A total number of 20,848 EHR clinical notes associated with the 1704 unique patients were used in this study.

Patients who had experienced diagnostic errors were grouped by sex: 59 (7.1%) of the 830 women and 67 (7.7%) of the 874 men in the larger cross-matched sample had been found to have a diagnostic error. Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics between female and male patient groups. We applied the Wilcoxon rank sum test for numerical features (ie, age and length of stay), and the chi-square test for mortality rate, admission diagnosis, and admission department or specialty. Patients in the female group were older than the male group by a median of 72 (IQR 66-80) versus a median of 67 (IQR 57-76; P =.02). Compared to the male group, female patients who experienced diagnostic error had higher rates of being admitted through general or internal medicine (69.5% vs 47.8%; P =.01), lower rates of cardiovascular-related admitted diagnosis (11.9% vs 28.4%; P =.02), and lower rates of being admitted through neurology department (2.3% vs 13.4%; P =.04). We observed no differences between groups in mortality rates and length of stay.

Classification Models’ Performance

Clinical notes were preprocessed for TF-IDF feature calculation. The bag-of-words included 2227 words, and each word was considered a feature (see Table S1 in Multimedia Appendix 2 for the top 100 words). We found that abscess, ascend, abnormality, scant, pair, and prefer were the top 5 features with the highest positive estimated coefficient (0.42 to 0.28); post, select, gave, muscl, hours, and unrespons were the top 5 features with the highest negative coefficients (–0.35 to –0.26). After applying the chi-square test, 250 features with a P value less than .05 were selected for the modeling process. All 4 ML classifiers were trained using the 250 selected features.

Table 3 presents the performances of the simple logistic regression and 3 regularized logistic regression models (LASSO, Ridge, and Elastic Net). The Ridge model achieved the highest AUROC (0.885), specificity (0.797), PPV (0.24), NPV (0.981), and F 1 -score (0.369) in classifying patients who were at higher risk of diagnostic errors among hospitalized patients in SLS system. The simple logistic regression model obtained the highest AUPRC (0.537). The simple logistic regression model classified all patients as the ones with diagnostic errors; therefore, it achieved a sensitivity of 1, and specificity and NPV of 0.

Figures 2 and 3 present the receiver operating characteristics curves and precision-recall curves for the 4 classifiers in this study. Models that give ROC curves closer to the top-left corner indicate a better performance. The AUROC values represent the probability that a patient who experienced a diagnostic error, chosen at random, is ranked higher by the Ridge model than a randomly chosen patient who did not experience a diagnostic error. The higher value of AUPRC indicates that the Ridge model can identify patients who experienced diagnostic errors more precisely with fewer false positives compared to LASSO and Elastic Net models.

a LASSO: Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator.

b AUROC: area under receiver operating characteristics curve.

c AUPRC: area under precision-recall curve.

Principal Findings

Our contribution is 2-fold; first, we integrated 2 data sources that are currently used by and available to many organizations across the United States, SLS and EHR data, to explore the use of ML and NLP algorithms to help identify diagnostic errors among hospitalized patients. Although case review methodologies offer rich insights into systems errors and OFIs, the predefined pull-down menus and structured data labels typically do not capture all the necessary clinical and contextual details that are considered by reviewers. Therefore, a large portion of these case review data are stored in free-text narratives that typically record key information and judgments decided upon by the multidisciplinary reviewers. However, given persistent issues of staff shortage and lack of time in health care settings, it is becoming increasingly important to lower the burden of systematic EHR data reviews for health care providers while maintaining the review systems in place. Second, any developed ML and NLP approaches can potentially be incorporated to generate a diagnostic error risk score for each patient. The predicted risk score can be used in identifying and prioritizing patients for focused chart reviews, thus lowering the burden of systematic EHR data reviews for health care providers while maintaining the review systems in place.

To our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to apply and test several different ML classification models to identify diagnostic errors within routinely collected organizational case review data. Despite a substantial body of literature about the prevalence of diagnostic errors in hospital settings, current efforts to identify diagnostic errors generally rely on reviews of patient cases and data by clinical or quality teams that often are resource-intensive. ML classification models and NLP techniques offer an opportunity to generate diagnostic error risk scores to sort through large data sets and identify signals of potential diagnostic errors that can be flagged for further review. However, these classification models require a high number of observations (and identified diagnostic errors) to perform well, which might not be feasible for health organizations that are just beginning to identify diagnostic errors or may have limited personnel and efforts to perform high numbers of case reviews. In this study, we accessed nearly 2000 patient records (and of those, only 126 cases of diagnostic errors), which is considered to be a limited data sample size in the field of ML. However, techniques, such as feature selection and n-fold cross-validations, can potentially be approaches to address small sample size challenges [ 35 ].

Using the results of the simple logistic regression model as the baseline performance, we found that 3 regularization functions, namely LASSO, Ridge, and Elastic Net, boosted the performance of the baseline model. The Ridge model outperformed the rest of the models in terms of multiple performance metrics: AUROC of 0.885, specificity of 0.797, PPV of 0.24, NPV of 0.981, and F 1 -score of 0.369. The Ridge algorithm tries to keep all features in the model even the features with a slight effect on the classification outcome. Since the patterns pointing at a diagnostic error were subtle in the clinical notes, even a small effect of a feature on the model’s classification outcome could be important for the classification model to learn. On the other hand, the LASSO algorithm rigorously removes features that have a small effect on the classification outcome. The Elastic Net model is a weighted combination of LASSO and Ridge. The performance results presented in Table 3 show that the values achieved by the Elastic Net model lie between those of the LASSO and Ridge models.

Insights From Diagnostic Errors Within Free-Text Clinical Notes

We did not find the free text formatted clinical notes in the EHR to reflect any sort of direct language around diagnostic errors. Our analysis identified no use of the terms misdiagnosis, missed diagnosis, or diagnostic error within clinical notes, finding instead more subtle signals pointing at diagnostic errors such as “there may be a chance of misreading the test,” or “insufficient data to make a diagnosis.” Our findings demonstrate that NLP algorithms can be used to identify such patterns and find the associations between diagnostic errors and the subtle signals in the clinical notes. A natural extension of this work can focus on using other feature extraction methods, such as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers contextualized word embeddings, and explore the use of the pretrained language models for this objective.

We found that the presence of terms, such as abscess, abnormality, “cp” (chest pain) , and dialysis in a patient’s EHR clinical note were associated with reviewer-identified diagnostic errors ( Multimedia Appendix 2 ). Misinterpretation of chest pain, specifically among female patients, has the potential to cause a cardiovascular-related diagnosis error [ 36 ]. Patients with chronic kidney disease are at higher risk of cardiovascular complications [ 37 ]. Missing such risk for a patient who is on dialysis, adds to the risk of diagnostic error.

Clinical and System Implications Around Diagnostic Inequity

Diagnostic inequity is defined as “the presence of preventable unwarranted variations in diagnostic process among population groups that are socially, economically, demographically, or geographically disadvantaged” [ 38 ]. Despite persistent and well-documented disparities in health care access and outcomes across different population groups, few studies have examined the association between diagnostic errors and health care disparities [ 39 ]. Recent evidence supports the notion that variation in diagnostic error rates across demographic groups may exist, particularly across sex. A systematic review of diagnostic errors in the emergency department, for example, found that female sex and non-White race were often associated with increased risk for diagnostic errors across several clinical conditions in emergency settings [ 40 ]. In cardiovascular medicine, a national cohort study of acute myocardial infarctions found that women were nearly twice as likely as men to receive the wrong initial diagnosis following signs of a heart attack [ 41 ]. Despite efforts to understand and reduce disparities in diagnosis and treatment, women not only continue to be understudied, underdiagnosed, and undertreated in cardiovascular medicine [ 42 ] but also may experience longer lengths of time to diagnosis than men in most patterns of disease diagnosis [ 43 ].

The analysis of case review data and other system-based data (eg, patient safety events or incident reporting) by subsets offer an opportunity to identify events in vulnerable patient populations and help sensitize clinicians to potential biases within the diagnostic process. To explore sex differences in diagnostic errors within our case review data, we statistically compared demographic and clinical differences between female and male patients who had been identified in case reviews as having experienced diagnostic error or errors. We found that of those patients who had experienced diagnostic error or errors, the female group of patients were older, had higher rates of being admitted through general or internal medicine or hospitalist (vs specialty) departments, and had lower rates of having a cardiovascular diagnosis on admission. These preliminary results of this study revealed unexpected differences between male and female diagnostic error groups, offering novel insights that warrant further investigation to fully understand the mechanisms underlying these relationships and their implications for clinical decision-making and practice. Future uses of NLP can potentially support clinical and system-based approaches to capture and increase the evidence around structural biases or disparities in diagnoses. Individual cases from these types of data sources could be used as example narratives to engage clinicians and improve clinician learning, contributing to the development of tailored clinician and systemic interventions that can improve quality and equity throughout the diagnostic process.

Limitations

This study has several limitations. Our definition of diagnostic errors was limited to the categories and labels used within the SLS data set, reviewer interpretations of cases (subject to reviewer bias), and does not include all aspects of the definition developed by the NASEM report [ 3 ]. Despite several continued differences in definitions of diagnostic error in the peer-reviewed literature [ 8 ], we recommend that quality and safety teams within health systems use the NASEM definition for diagnostic error—including errors in communicating the diagnosis to the patient—to develop any definitions, categories, or labels used in their case review and surveillance initiatives. Although a time-consuming task, future studies could consider EHR data chart reviews to have the ground truth for the diagnostic error cases and add to the accuracy of the data set used for training the ML classifiers. Additionally, due to staffing challenges and shifting organizational priorities, case review selection varies by hospital and has changed over time, resulting in a relatively small sample size and also introducing the potential for bias. Our data came from a single health system and may reflect the specific language, culture, and practices occurring within the system and therefore may not be similar to that of other health systems. To enhance the external validity and generalizability of results, future efforts and research studies should consider the random selection of cases to evaluate both diagnostic and general quality issues within the organization; studies with larger sample sizes can build on our preliminary findings and test differences between clinical subgroups. Finally, our classification models were developed and evaluated based on a retrospective cohort from EHR; therefore, the performance may deteriorate when the method is applied to real-time data. Further work or future studies should be conducted to prospectively validate the models.

Conclusions

We performed an NLP approach and compared 4 techniques to classify patients who were at a higher risk of experiencing diagnostic error during hospitalization. Our findings demonstrate that NLP can be a potential solution to more effectively identifying and selecting potential diagnostic error cases for review, and therefore, reducing the case review burden.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (grant 5R18HS027280-02).

Conflicts of Interest

None declared.

Binary classification performance metrics.

The Estimated Coefficient from the Ridge Model.

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Abbreviations

Edited by S Ma, T Leung; submitted 17.07.23; peer-reviewed by D Chrimes, M Elbattah; comments to author 18.01.24; revised version received 21.03.24; accepted 20.06.24; published 26.08.24.

©Azade Tabaie, Alberta Tran, Tony Calabria, Sonita S Bennett, Arianna Milicia, William Weintraub, William James Gallagher, John Yosaitis, Laura C Schubel, Mary A Hill, Kelly Michelle Smith, Kristen Miller. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 26.08.2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (ISSN 1438-8871), is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: Writing a Case Study

• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Reading Research Effectively
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Essays
• Writing a Case Study
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Bibliography

The term case study refers to both a method of analysis and a specific research design for examining a problem, both of which are used in most circumstances to generalize across populations. This tab focuses on the latter--how to design and organize a research paper in the social sciences that analyzes a specific case.

A case study research paper examines a person, place, event, phenomenon, or other type of subject of analysis in order to extrapolate  key themes and results that help predict future trends, illuminate previously hidden issues that can be applied to practice, and/or provide a means for understanding an important research problem with greater clarity. A case study paper usually examines a single subject of analysis, but case study papers can also be designed as a comparative investigation that shows relationships between two or among more than two subjects. The methods used to study a case can rest within a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method investigative paradigm.

Case Studies . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010 ; “What is a Case Study?” In Swanborn, Peter G. Case Study Research: What, Why and How? London: SAGE, 2010.

How to Approach Writing a Case Study Research Paper

General information about how to choose a topic to investigate can be found under the " Choosing a Research Problem " tab in this writing guide. Review this page because it may help you identify a subject of analysis that can be investigated using a single case study design.

However, identifying a case to investigate involves more than choosing the research problem . A case study encompasses a problem contextualized around the application of in-depth analysis, interpretation, and discussion, often resulting in specific recommendations for action or for improving existing conditions. As Seawright and Gerring note, practical considerations such as time and access to information can influence case selection, but these issues should not be the sole factors used in describing the methodological justification for identifying a particular case to study. Given this, selecting a case includes considering the following:

• Does the case represent an unusual or atypical example of a research problem that requires more in-depth analysis? Cases often represent a topic that rests on the fringes of prior investigations because the case may provide new ways of understanding the research problem. For example, if the research problem is to identify strategies to improve policies that support girl's access to secondary education in predominantly Muslim nations, you could consider using Azerbaijan as a case study rather than selecting a more obvious nation in the Middle East. Doing so may reveal important new insights into recommending how governments in other predominantly Muslim nations can formulate policies that support improved access to education for girls.
• Does the case provide important insight or illuminate a previously hidden problem? In-depth analysis of a case can be based on the hypothesis that the case study will reveal trends or issues that have not been exposed in prior research or will reveal new and important implications for practice. For example, anecdotal evidence may suggest drug use among homeless veterans is related to their patterns of travel throughout the day. Assuming prior studies have not looked at individual travel choices as a way to study access to illicit drug use, a case study that observes a homeless veteran could reveal how issues of personal mobility choices facilitate regular access to illicit drugs. Note that it is important to conduct a thorough literature review to ensure that your assumption about the need to reveal new insights or previously hidden problems is valid and evidence-based.
• Does the case challenge and offer a counter-point to prevailing assumptions? Over time, research on any given topic can fall into a trap of developing assumptions based on outdated studies that are still applied to new or changing conditions or the idea that something should simply be accepted as "common sense," even though the issue has not been thoroughly tested in practice. A case may offer you an opportunity to gather evidence that challenges prevailing assumptions about a research problem and provide a new set of recommendations applied to practice that have not been tested previously. For example, perhaps there has been a long practice among scholars to apply a particular theory in explaining the relationship between two subjects of analysis. Your case could challenge this assumption by applying an innovative theoretical framework [perhaps borrowed from another discipline] to the study a case in order to explore whether this approach offers new ways of understanding the research problem. Taking a contrarian stance is one of the most important ways that new knowledge and understanding develops from existing literature.
• Does the case provide an opportunity to pursue action leading to the resolution of a problem? Another way to think about choosing a case to study is to consider how the results from investigating a particular case may result in findings that reveal ways in which to resolve an existing or emerging problem. For example, studying the case of an unforeseen incident, such as a fatal accident at a railroad crossing, can reveal hidden issues that could be applied to preventative measures that contribute to reducing the chance of accidents in the future. In this example, a case study investigating the accident could lead to a better understanding of where to strategically locate additional signals at other railroad crossings in order to better warn drivers of an approaching train, particularly when visibility is hindered by heavy rain, fog, or at night.
• Does the case offer a new direction in future research? A case study can be used as a tool for exploratory research that points to a need for further examination of the research problem. A case can be used when there are few studies that help predict an outcome or that establish a clear understanding about how best to proceed in addressing a problem. For example, after conducting a thorough literature review [very important!], you discover that little research exists showing the ways in which women contribute to promoting water conservation in rural communities of Uganda. A case study of how women contribute to saving water in a particular village can lay the foundation for understanding the need for more thorough research that documents how women in their roles as cooks and family caregivers think about water as a valuable resource within their community throughout rural regions of east Africa. The case could also point to the need for scholars to apply feminist theories of work and family to the issue of water conservation.

Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. “Building Theories from Case Study Research.” Academy of Management Review 14 (October 1989): 532-550; Emmel, Nick. Sampling and Choosing Cases in Qualitative Research: A Realist Approach . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2013; Gerring, John. “What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good for?” American Political Science Review 98 (May 2004): 341-354; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Seawright, Jason and John Gerring. "Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research." Political Research Quarterly 61 (June 2008): 294-308.

Structure and Writing Style

The purpose of a paper in the social sciences designed around a case study is to thoroughly investigate a subject of analysis in order to reveal a new understanding about the research problem and, in so doing, contributing new knowledge to what is already known from previous studies. In applied social sciences disciplines [e.g., education, social work, public administration, etc.], case studies may also be used to reveal best practices, highlight key programs, or investigate interesting aspects of professional work. In general, the structure of a case study research paper is not all that different from a standard college-level research paper. However, there are subtle differences you should be aware of. Here are the key elements to organizing and writing a case study research paper.

I.  Introduction

As with any research paper, your introduction should serve as a roadmap for your readers to ascertain the scope and purpose of your study . The introduction to a case study research paper, however, should not only describe the research problem and its significance, but you should also succinctly describe why the case is being used and how it relates to addressing the problem. The two elements should be linked. With this in mind, a good introduction answers these four questions:

• What was I studying? Describe the research problem and describe the subject of analysis you have chosen to address the problem. Explain how they are linked and what elements of the case will help to expand knowledge and understanding about the problem.
• Why was this topic important to investigate? Describe the significance of the research problem and state why a case study design and the subject of analysis that the paper is designed around is appropriate in addressing the problem.
• What did we know about this topic before I did this study? Provide background that helps lead the reader into the more in-depth literature review to follow. If applicable, summarize prior case study research applied to the research problem and why it fails to adequately address the research problem. Describe why your case will be useful. If no prior case studies have been used to address the research problem, explain why you have selected this subject of analysis.
• How will this study advance new knowledge or new ways of understanding? Explain why your case study will be suitable in helping to expand knowledge and understanding about the research problem.

Each of these questions should be addressed in no more than a few paragraphs. Exceptions to this can be when you are addressing a complex research problem or subject of analysis that requires more in-depth background information.

II.  Literature Review

The literature review for a case study research paper is generally structured the same as it is for any college-level research paper. The difference, however, is that the literature review is focused on providing background information and  enabling historical interpretation of the subject of analysis in relation to the research problem the case is intended to address . This includes synthesizing studies that help to:

• Place relevant works in the context of their contribution to understanding the case study being investigated . This would include summarizing studies that have used a similar subject of analysis to investigate the research problem. If there is literature using the same or a very similar case to study, you need to explain why duplicating past research is important [e.g., conditions have changed; prior studies were conducted long ago, etc.].
• Describe the relationship each work has to the others under consideration that informs the reader why this case is applicable . Your literature review should include a description of any works that support using the case to study the research problem and the underlying research questions.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research using the case study . If applicable, review any research that has examined the research problem using a different research design. Explain how your case study design may reveal new knowledge or a new perspective or that can redirect research in an important new direction.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies . This refers to synthesizing any literature that points to unresolved issues of concern about the research problem and describing how the subject of analysis that forms the case study can help resolve these existing contradictions.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research . Your review should examine any literature that lays a foundation for understanding why your case study design and the subject of analysis around which you have designed your study may reveal a new way of approaching the research problem or offer a perspective that points to the need for additional research.
• Expose any gaps that exist in the literature that the case study could help to fill . Summarize any literature that not only shows how your subject of analysis contributes to understanding the research problem, but how your case contributes to a new way of understanding the problem that prior research has failed to do.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important!] . Collectively, your literature review should always place your case study within the larger domain of prior research about the problem. The overarching purpose of reviewing pertinent literature in a case study paper is to demonstrate that you have thoroughly identified and synthesized prior studies in the context of explaining the relevance of the case in addressing the research problem.

III.  Method

In this section, you explain why you selected a particular subject of analysis to study and the strategy you used to identify and ultimately decide that your case was appropriate in addressing the research problem. The way you describe the methods used varies depending on the type of subject of analysis that frames your case study.

If your subject of analysis is an incident or event . In the social and behavioral sciences, the event or incident that represents the case to be studied is usually bounded by time and place, with a clear beginning and end and with an identifiable location or position relative to its surroundings. The subject of analysis can be a rare or critical event or it can focus on a typical or regular event. The purpose of studying a rare event is to illuminate new ways of thinking about the broader research problem or to test a hypothesis. Critical incident case studies must describe the method by which you identified the event and explain the process by which you determined the validity of this case to inform broader perspectives about the research problem or to reveal new findings. However, the event does not have to be a rare or uniquely significant to support new thinking about the research problem or to challenge an existing hypothesis. For example, Walo, Bull, and Breen conducted a case study to identify and evaluate the direct and indirect economic benefits and costs of a local sports event in the City of Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. The purpose of their study was to provide new insights from measuring the impact of a typical local sports event that prior studies could not measure well because they focused on large "mega-events." Whether the event is rare or not, the methods section should include an explanation of the following characteristics of the event: a) when did it take place; b) what were the underlying circumstances leading to the event; c) what were the consequences of the event.

If your subject of analysis is a person. Explain why you selected this particular individual to be studied and describe what experience he or she has had that provides an opportunity to advance new understandings about the research problem. Mention any background about this person which might help the reader understand the significance of his/her experiences that make them worthy of study. This includes describing the relationships this person has had with other people, institutions, and/or events that support using him or her as the subject for a case study research paper. It is particularly important to differentiate the person as the subject of analysis from others and to succinctly explain how the person relates to examining the research problem.

If your subject of analysis is a place. In general, a case study that investigates a place suggests a subject of analysis that is unique or special in some way and that this uniqueness can be used to build new understanding or knowledge about the research problem. A case study of a place must not only describe its various attributes relevant to the research problem [e.g., physical, social, cultural, economic, political, etc.], but you must state the method by which you determined that this place will illuminate new understandings about the research problem. It is also important to articulate why a particular place as the case for study is being used if similar places also exist [i.e., if you are studying patterns of homeless encampments of veterans in open spaces, why study Echo Park in Los Angeles rather than Griffith Park?]. If applicable, describe what type of human activity involving this place makes it a good choice to study [e.g., prior research reveals Echo Park has more homeless veterans].

If your subject of analysis is a phenomenon. A phenomenon refers to a fact, occurrence, or circumstance that can be studied or observed but with the cause or explanation to be in question. In this sense, a phenomenon that forms your subject of analysis can encompass anything that can be observed or presumed to exist but is not fully understood. In the social and behavioral sciences, the case usually focuses on human interaction within a complex physical, social, economic, cultural, or political system. For example, the phenomenon could be the observation that many vehicles used by ISIS fighters are small trucks with English language advertisements on them. The research problem could be that ISIS fighters are difficult to combat because they are highly mobile. The research questions could be how and by what means are these vehicles used by ISIS being supplied to the militants and how might supply lines to these vehicles be cut? How might knowing the suppliers of these trucks from overseas reveal larger networks of collaborators and financial support? A case study of a phenomenon most often encompasses an in-depth analysis of a cause and effect that is grounded in an interactive relationship between people and their environment in some way.

NOTE:   The choice of the case or set of cases to study cannot appear random. Evidence that supports the method by which you identified and chose your subject of analysis should be linked to the findings from the literature review. Be sure to cite any prior studies that helped you determine that the case you chose was appropriate for investigating the research problem.

IV.  Discussion

The main elements of your discussion section are generally the same as any research paper, but centered around interpreting and drawing conclusions about the key findings from your case study. Note that a general social sciences research paper may contain a separate section to report findings. However, in a paper designed around a case study, it is more common to combine a description of the findings with the discussion about their implications. The objectives of your discussion section should include the following:

Reiterate the Research Problem/State the Major Findings Briefly reiterate the research problem you are investigating and explain why the subject of analysis around which you designed the case study were used. You should then describe the findings revealed from your study of the case using direct, declarative, and succinct proclamation of the study results. Highlight any findings that were unexpected or especially profound.

Explain the Meaning of the Findings and Why They are Important Systematically explain the meaning of your case study findings and why you believe they are important. Begin this part of the section by repeating what you consider to be your most important or surprising finding first, then systematically review each finding. Be sure to thoroughly extrapolate what your analysis of the case can tell the reader about situations or conditions beyond the actual case that was studied while, at the same time, being careful not to misconstrue or conflate a finding that undermines the external validity of your conclusions.

Relate the Findings to Similar Studies No study in the social sciences is so novel or possesses such a restricted focus that it has absolutely no relation to previously published research. The discussion section should relate your case study results to those found in other studies, particularly if questions raised from prior studies served as the motivation for choosing your subject of analysis. This is important because comparing and contrasting the findings of other studies helps to support the overall importance of your results and it highlights how and in what ways your case study design and the subject of analysis differs from prior research about the topic.

Consider Alternative Explanations of the Findings It is important to remember that the purpose of social science research is to discover and not to prove. When writing the discussion section, you should carefully consider all possible explanations for the case study results, rather than just those that fit your hypothesis or prior assumptions and biases. Be alert to what the in-depth analysis of the case may reveal about the research problem, including offering a contrarian perspective to what scholars have stated in prior research.

Acknowledge the Study's Limitations You can state the study's limitations in the conclusion section of your paper but describing the limitations of your subject of analysis in the discussion section provides an opportunity to identify the limitations and explain why they are not significant. This part of the discussion section should also note any unanswered questions or issues your case study could not address. More detailed information about how to document any limitations to your research can be found here .

Suggest Areas for Further Research Although your case study may offer important insights about the research problem, there are likely additional questions related to the problem that remain unanswered or findings that unexpectedly revealed themselves as a result of your in-depth analysis of the case. Be sure that the recommendations for further research are linked to the research problem and that you explain why your recommendations are valid in other contexts and based on the original assumptions of your study.

V.  Conclusion

As with any research paper, you should summarize your conclusion in clear, simple language; emphasize how the findings from your case study differs from or supports prior research and why. Do not simply reiterate the discussion section. Provide a synthesis of key findings presented in the paper to show how these converge to address the research problem. If you haven't already done so in the discussion section, be sure to document the limitations of your case study and needs for further research.

The function of your paper's conclusion is to: 1)  restate the main argument supported by the findings from the analysis of your case; 2) clearly state the context, background, and necessity of pursuing the research problem using a case study design in relation to an issue, controversy, or a gap found from reviewing the literature; and, 3) provide a place for you to persuasively and succinctly restate the significance of your research problem, given that the reader has now been presented with in-depth information about the topic.

Consider the following points to help ensure your conclusion is appropriate:

• If the argument or purpose of your paper is complex, you may need to summarize these points for your reader.
• If prior to your conclusion, you have not yet explained the significance of your findings or if you are proceeding inductively, use the conclusion of your paper to describe your main points and explain their significance.
• Move from a detailed to a general level of consideration of the case study's findings that returns the topic to the context provided by the introduction or within a new context that emerges from your case study findings.

Note that, depending on the discipline you are writing in and your professor's preferences, the concluding paragraph may contain your final reflections on the evidence presented applied to practice or on the essay's central research problem. However, the nature of being introspective about the subject of analysis you have investigated will depend on whether you are explicitly asked to express your observations in this way.

Problems to Avoid

Overgeneralization One of the goals of a case study is to lay a foundation for understanding broader trends and issues applied to similar circumstances. However, be careful when drawing conclusions from your case study. They must be evidence-based and grounded in the results of the study; otherwise, it is merely speculation. Looking at a prior example, it would be incorrect to state that a factor in improving girls access to education in Azerbaijan and the policy implications this may have for improving access in other Muslim nations is due to girls access to social media if there is no documentary evidence from your case study to indicate this. There may be anecdotal evidence that retention rates were better for girls who were on social media, but this observation would only point to the need for further research and would not be a definitive finding if this was not a part of your original research agenda.

Failure to Document Limitations No case is going to reveal all that needs to be understood about a research problem. Therefore, just as you have to clearly state the limitations of a general research study , you must describe the specific limitations inherent in the subject of analysis. For example, the case of studying how women conceptualize the need for water conservation in a village in Uganda could have limited application in other cultural contexts or in areas where fresh water from rivers or lakes is plentiful and, therefore, conservation is understood differently than preserving access to a scarce resource.

Failure to Extrapolate All Possible Implications Just as you don't want to over-generalize from your case study findings, you also have to be thorough in the consideration of all possible outcomes or recommendations derived from your findings. If you do not, your reader may question the validity of your analysis, particularly if you failed to document an obvious outcome from your case study research. For example, in the case of studying the accident at the railroad crossing to evaluate where and what types of warning signals should be located, you failed to take into consideration speed limit signage as well as warning signals. When designing your case study, be sure you have thoroughly addressed all aspects of the problem and do not leave gaps in your analysis.

Case Studies . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Gerring, John. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; Merriam, Sharan B. Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education . Rev. ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1998; Miller, Lisa L. “The Use of Case Studies in Law and Social Science Research.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 14 (2018): TBD; Mills, Albert J., Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Putney, LeAnn Grogan. "Case Study." In Encyclopedia of Research Design , Neil J. Salkind, editor. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010), pp. 116-120; Simons, Helen. Case Study Research in Practice . London: SAGE Publications, 2009;  Kratochwill,  Thomas R. and Joel R. Levin, editors. Single-Case Research Design and Analysis: New Development for Psychology and Education .  Hilldsale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992; Swanborn, Peter G. Case Study Research: What, Why and How? London : SAGE, 2010; Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research: Design and Methods . 6th edition. Los Angeles, CA, SAGE Publications, 2014; Walo, Maree, Adrian Bull, and Helen Breen. “Achieving Economic Benefits at Local Events: A Case Study of a Local Sports Event.” Festival Management and Event Tourism 4 (1996): 95-106.

Writing Tip

At Least Five Misconceptions about Case Study Research

Social science case studies are often perceived as limited in their ability to create new knowledge because they are not randomly selected and findings cannot be generalized to larger populations. Flyvbjerg examines five misunderstandings about case study research and systematically "corrects" each one. To quote, these are:

Misunderstanding 1 :  General, theoretical [context-independent knowledge is more valuable than concrete, practical (context-dependent) knowledge. Misunderstanding 2 :  One cannot generalize on the basis of an individual case; therefore, the case study cannot contribute to scientific development. Misunderstanding 3 :  The case study is most useful for generating hypotheses; that is, in the first stage of a total research process, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building. Misunderstanding 4 :  The case study contains a bias toward verification, that is, a tendency to confirm the researcher’s preconceived notions. Misunderstanding 5 :  It is often difficult to summarize and develop general propositions and theories on the basis of specific case studies [p. 221].

While writing your paper, think introspectively about how you addressed these misconceptions because to do so can help you strengthen the validity and reliability of your research by clarifying issues of case selection, the testing and challenging of existing assumptions, the interpretation of key findings, and the summation of case outcomes. Think of a case study research paper as a complete, in-depth narrative about the specific properties and key characteristics of your subject of analysis applied to the research problem.

Flyvbjerg, Bent. “Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 12 (April 2006): 219-245.

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