In one line: A case study is a detailed analysis of one case, over time, in its own setting.
Some things happen only once.
A school starts a choir for fifteen students who have just arrived from other countries. There is no second choir to compare it with, and no way to run the year again.
To understand what the choir does for those students, a researcher has to study this choir, closely, while it lasts.
What counts as a case
- An individual: one patient, one child, one expert.
- A group: a choir, a family, a hospital ward.
- An event or a setting: a school merger, a village after an earthquake.
A case study produces knowledge about that case in its context. It is a research method, yet it collects data through other methods, such as interviews and observations.
Remember: A single case, several methods, followed through time.
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Key idea: A case study is chosen when the case is unusual, many-sided, or could not be created by a researcher.
Follow the choir. A researcher joins it as a helper for one school year, to find out whether singing together helps newly arrived students settle in.
Four features
Rare cases
Nothing else like it exists to study.
One school, one choir, fifteen singers: far too few for an experiment, and no researcher could set such a project up and take it away again.
Rich data
Methods are combined: observation at rehearsals, a group interview with the singers, attendance records.
The result is qualitative data (what singers say and do) and quantitative data (how often they attend).
Real context
The choir is studied where it happens, in the school hall on Thursday afternoons.
The findings are tied to that context.
Over time
Data are collected every term for a year.
A design that returns to the same people over a long period is longitudinal, and it can show change.
Unusual · Detailed · In context · Through time
What one case can do: A single case can open a question nobody had asked.
If the quietest singers are the first to make friends outside the choir, that is a lead for a larger study. The case study found it; it did not prove it.
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Key idea: Findings from one source can be checked against another. A case study is built to make that possible.
The researcher sings in the choir herself, so she sees a great deal. She also likes the singers, which may colour what she sees.
The answer is triangulation: more than one route to the same finding.
Four types of triangulation
Method triangulation
Two or more methods address the same question.
Here: observation at rehearsals and a group interview at the end of the year.
Data triangulation
Data come from different sources, or from the same source at different times.
Here: the singers, their class teachers, and notes from each of the three terms.
Researcher triangulation
Several researchers work on the same data and compare conclusions.
Here: two outside researchers read her rehearsal notes and discuss her analysis.
Theory triangulation
More than one theory is used to interpret the findings.
Here: belonging to a group, and growing confidence in a new language.
Methods · Sources · People · Theories
Agreement between sources makes the account more credible. Disagreement is useful too: it shows where her own view may have led her.
Exam tip: Give the type and the evidence.
Not "triangulation was used", but "researcher triangulation: two outside researchers reviewed her notes".
Key idea: No method tells you more about a single case, and no method tells you less about everyone else.
Strengths
- Detailed, many-sided data about the case
- Studies what could not be arranged, practically or ethically
- Behaviour seen in context, as it unfolds
- Suggests new questions; tests a theory against a real case
Limits
- A unique case cannot be studied again
- No basis for generalising to a population
- No control of variables, so no causes
- Long contact invites researcher bias; hard to keep anonymous
Because the study cannot be repeated, its reliability is low.
Its findings are not generalised. At most they are transferable: a school with a similar intake might expect a similar choir to help in similar ways.
Watch out: A case study describes one case. It does not explain what caused it.
The singers settled in well. Whether the choir did that, or the school, or simply a year passing, the study cannot say.
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Your four class practicals
- Your class runs four small studies of its own, called class practicals: an experiment, an interview, an observation and a survey.
- Paper 2 asks about the ones your class ran.
- Keep a short note of each: aim, what you did, who took part, what you found, and the ethics.
How this is asked: A class cannot run a case study as a practical, so the questions that fit it are comparisons: the method of your class practical set against the methodology of a case study, for 6 marks.
The answer pattern
- Two or three similarities, each starting with "Both".
- Two or three differences, each using "whereas".
- Your own practical in every paragraph.
The trap: leaving the link unstated: An observation or an interview can be one part of a case study.
Say so. It is the clearest single point about how the two relate.
Your class practical was an observation. For 20 minutes your class recorded, from the side of the hall, how often members of the school choir spoke to singers outside their own friendship group during a rehearsal. Compare and contrast the research methodology of the observation used in your class practical with the research methodology of a case study.
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