Qualitative and Quantitative Methods - Essay Example

Running Head: CASE STUDY RESEARCH METHOD Case Study Research Method [The Writer’s Name] [The Name of the Institution] Case Study Research Method Introduction The study of the single case or an array of several cases remains indispensable to the progress of the social sciences. Many researchers will need to turn to the case study as a way of making a serious investigation of some mystery about the social world. The case study offers them the opportunity to study these social mysteries at a relatively small price, for it requires one person, or at most a handful of people, to perform the necessary observations and interpretation of data, compared with the massive organizational machinery generally required by random sample surveys and population censuses. The case study is not the only method for conducting social research, but it does represent a significant methodological tool and strategy for the social scientist. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods A case study is defined as an in-depth, multifaceted investigation, using qualitative research methods, of a single social phenomenon. The study is conducted in great detail and often relies on the use of several data sources. This definition is intentionally broad, and we do not argue that it is unambiguous. For example, some case studies have made use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. And some of our best research studies have involved a small number of case studies conducted in a comparative framework. In case study research the nature of the social phenomenon studied has varied. It can be an organization; it can be a role, or role-occupants; it can be a city; it can even be an entire group of people. The case study is usually seen as an instance of a broader phenomenon, as part of a larger set of parallel instances. Now, since just a single instance of a phenomenon is under investigation, there is the further, presupposition that certain kinds of data collection, procedures will be employed, procedures that will permit the investigator to examine this. Another type is the social history of a social group or collectivity. Social histories that qualify as case studies are those conducted on the past experience of a group and that seek therein to elicit discoveries and insights that can illuminate the experience of other, similar groups. Here it is worth noting that the historian, as compared with the social scientist who conducts such histories, usually operates with a different set of implicit assumptions about the meaning of historical data. The historian is apt to assume that the study of a particular event, which is unlikely to illuminate a parallel event, let us say the civil war in Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s, because, supposedly, the world consists only of singular events. One event, the historian assumes, possesses its own concatenation of actors and institutions, and these simply are similar to those of another event in only the most abstract and general way. Social scientists, by comparison, will relax the assumption of singularity somewhat and will look for parallels between historical events (Tilly 1999, 239-44; Stinchcombe 1998, 110-16). What makes this revolution similar to that one, for example? Why is the history of this city in the Midwest similar to the history of that city in the Northeast? Nevertheless, it will be a difference of degree, not of kind. Both sorts of researchers will seek to construct a record of the past and seek to tell a story of the life and times of a specific group of people. Further, both may be interested in the matter of historical continuities and changes, searching for ways in which patterns remain the same or vary over time. It should be noted that numerous qualitative studies have used elements of these various case study approaches in an eclectic fashion. Some Advantages of Case Study Research There are several fundamental lessons that can be conveyed by the case study: 1. It permits the grounding of observations and concepts about social action and social structures in natural settings studied at close hand. 2. It provides information from a number of sources and over a period of time, thus permitting a more holistic study of complex social networks and of complexes of social action and social meanings. 3. It can furnish the dimensions of time and history to the study of social life, thereby enabling the investigator to examine continuity and change in life world patterns. 4. It encourages and facilitates, in practice, theoretical innovation and generalization. Consider first that case studies enable the investigator to ground the observations and concepts with which she or he works. The detailed and, rich data offered by the well-crafted case study permit the analyst to develop a solid empirical basis for specific concepts and generalizations. Much quantitative work in modern, social science deals with brief survey questions and answers and large numbers of disconnected respondents; indeed, such work often does not involve original data collection. As a result, the flesh and bones of the everyday life world is removed from the substance of the research itself, thereby diminishing the usefulness of the research for subsequent investigations. In contrast, a principal argument for case study research is that it provides a way of studying human events and actions in their natural surroundings. The case study lies at one end of a continuum, with the experiment posed at the other. Whereas the case study enables an observer to record people engaged in real-life activities, the experiment is an artificial construction of life. An experimenter may wish to examine how one particular variable, let us say exposure to a film, affects the way people think about some phenomenon. So he or she assesses people's beliefs before the film, exposes one group of them to the film, and then afterward compares beliefs of the exposed and the unexposed sets to determine whether exposure made any difference. Although such an experiment provides an elegant method of uncovering something about how people's beliefs are shaped and modified, it is usually conducted in such a way as to remove people from their daily circumstances of living. All of this is to make another point often put forth by researchers who engage in case study research. The argument is made that such analyses permit the observer to render social action in a manner that comes closest to the action as it is understood by the actors themselves. Here the observer wishes to make claims that are grounded in the claims of those who make them. In contrast, an experiment creates an artificial social setting in which the experimenter manipulates the participants. A random-sample survey also relies on questions created in advance by the survey researcher to measure dimensions of belief or action reported by decontextualized respondents. Yet if one assumes that belief or action removed from its immediate (personal and social) context is, in one sense, no understandable action at all, then one must turn to the tools of qualitative research and the case study. (Sharan, 1997, 129-34) Holistic Approach and Case Study Research Method A second common feature of case studies is their holistic approach. Since the case study seeks to capture people as they experience their natural, everyday circumstances, it can offer a researcher empirical and theoretical gains in understanding larger social complexes of actors, actions, and motives. The organismic approach has been defended by case study advocates for many decades. The statistical approach does not take us very far in understanding human beings in some wholeness. Whereas a random-sample survey can permit some understanding of how respondents relate to one another, the typical survey assesses people as though they lived, acted, and believed in isolation from one another. A case study, in contrast, can permit the researcher to examine not only the complex of life in which people are implicated but also the impact on beliefs and decisions of the complex web of social interaction. Studies of tribes permit the observer to discover how systems of kinship networks develop and operate; studies of the occupants of individual roles enable the investigator to discover how the definition of a role emerges out of interactions between role-occupants and others; and studies of organizations permit the researcher to discover social interaction patterns that occur among employees or between employees and clients. An example of this can be seen in Hunter's work on Atlanta, where he argued that there existed a structure to the distribution of power in that city such that certain individuals from widely disparate settings were intimate associates of one another and that they routinely fashioned the important public decisions of the city. He then proceeded to demonstrate the validity of his assertion by displaying the specific patterns of friendship and interaction among key figures, along with materials on how these figures formulated particular policies. (Hunter, 1953, 59-62) More generally, a case study of a single phenomenon, let us say a city's public decision making or an organization's informal operations over a long period of time, allows the observer to examine social action in its most complete form. The investigator is better able to grasp the total complex world of social action as it unfolds. For someone who is interested in how people act in organizations, and how daily routines influence their work, such a gain can be quite considerable. Peter Blau ( 1955, 89-95), for instance, examined the way office work was conducted in two different federal agencies. He found that informal norms, and everyday social relationships, had an impact on how people, carried on their work within the organizations. Rosabeth Moss Kanter ( 1977, 56-60) studied gendered roles and the informal norms that channeled jobs by gender in a major electronics corporation. Case studies permit researchers to discover complex sets of decisions and to recount the effect of decisions over time. Political scientists probably pay more attention to such phenomena than other social scientists primarily because they believe decisions tell much about the character of power and influence. One important instance comes from the research of the political scientist Robert Dahl. Dahl's theory of, American politics claimed, among other things, that the exercise of power is a distinctly differentiated activity: Politicians, rather than wealthy capitalists or leading socialites, exercise power, and they do so through the control of specific decisions. Dahl went on to show how in the case of three particular arenas of public decisions in New Haven, different groups and individuals sought to exercise power. The vivid materials used to portray the patterns in New Haven, along with the lucid manner in which Dahl linked his generalizations to the empirical reality, enabled later investigators to seek to duplicate his work in other urban settings. Moreover, it also enabled another student of power in America, G. William Domhoff ( 1978, 95-101), to redo Dahl's New Haven history and to come up with data that challenged some of Dahl's original claims about the impotence of business elites. (Dahl, 1961 77-82) Holistic case studies can also involve the study of complexes of social meanings. A good case study can provide a full sense of actors' motives that eventuate in specific decisions and events. The student who uses the case study can see human beings up close, get a sense of what drives them, and develop claims of how their personal as well as collective lives have been created. An example of how a case study permits insight into human motivations is provided by Kai Erikson award-winning study ( 1976, 115-20) of the Buffalo Creek flood. The flood tore apart an Appalachian mining community. Erikson showed that the physical disaster produced significant personal and social upheavals as well. It had left people without a sense of who they were, destroying their sense of time, space, and family. More important, Erikson showed through a series of close interviews with survivors that the disaster had fundamentally disrupted the social fabric of the community, undermining its norms and way of life. Before the flood, members of the community, for instance, had strongly relied on the custom of neighborliness among one another, helping out in times of need, providing support to friends and family; the flood was so traumatic, however, that it literally destroyed this general social support system and with it the sense people possessed of a common way of life. A related point here is that the case study permits an investigator to examine how humans develop "definitions of the situation." Erikson's study of Buffalo Creek casts the "definitions" in terms of the neighborliness among Appalachian mountain folk. (Erikson, 1976, 115-20) A Sense Of Time And History Third, the case study can enable a researcher to examine the ebb and flow of social life over time and to display the patterns of everyday life as they change. A case study thus permits the analyst to uncover the historical dimension of a societal phenomenon or setting. One example is the Muncie study conducted by the Lynds. The Lynds' first research was done in the mid-1920s, and in that work they traced the history of the city as well as explored the various dimensions of everyday life. The volume they wrote was received with considerable enthusiasm by sophisticated readers. When misfortune intervened, and the Great Depression arrived, the Lynds returned to Muncie to see how circumstances had changed the residents' ways of life. The rich detail of their earlier study, coupled with an equally intense probing of Muncie during the mid1930s, permitted the Lynds to discover the many ways in which the depression and poverty had disrupted the lives of local residents. (Lynd, 1929, 166-69) Moreover, they were able to see social and political change at work: for example, over the course of the decade between the first and second studies, banks failed, businesses were disrupted, and one family, the Ball family, came to be increasingly wealthy and politically dominant in the town. The close observations of the wealth and influence of the Ball family became the foundation for other studies that sought to link together social stratification and the distribution of political power. In addition, the detailed analyses and descriptions by the Lynds permitted Bahr and Caplow, many years later, to return to Muncie to study the changes that had occurred, over half a century. Theory Generation A fourth virtue of case study research, like other qualitative research, is that it lends itself to theoretical generation and generalization. Theoretical generalization involves suggesting new interpretations and concepts or reexamining earlier concepts and interpretations in major and innovative ways ( Yin 1984, 143-51). Case studies have been particularly important in the generation of new ideas and theories in social science. Certainly one can develop significant new theoretical innovations and generalizations from good quantitative research, but in practice this has been less likely than in the case of qualitative research. Indeed, most quantitative research has been concerned with offering low-level generalizations or with extending, all too often in very small ways, inherited theory. Quantitative research has, pioneered in accenting the natural science method, in the language of verification: hypothesis and proposition testing, tentativeness, and proof. Although the corroboration or falsification of inherited theory is a legitimate social science enterprise, it has often been framed in this hypothetico-deductive verification language, in excessively rigid natural science terms. This verification framework, has led an overemphasis on statistics and refined quantitative techniques, overshadowing the important enterprise of theory generation. At its most rigid, this verification method has taken the form of positivism. This American positivism is characterized by a preoccupation with statistical techniques and a research instrumentation imitating the natural sciences. At its center has been the hypothetico-deductive verification rhetoric. Statistical generalization has been of much greater concern in quantitative research than has theory generation. Statistical generalization develops out of statistical measurement and involves the extrapolation of findings from one set of data to a larger set of data. Quantitative research often involves this type of generalization, whereby one can extrapolate within certain statistical parameters to a larger population from a small random sample. When it comes to statistical generalization, a case study represents the investigation of but a single instance of some phenomenon and therefore limits the degree to which the researcher can claim that her or his findings hold in like instances (Bryman 1988, 88-101; Black and Champion 1976, 92). In raising this legitimate concern, however, we must make certain distinctions to properly understand what is being generalized. If, for example, you are studying a social process, such as "recruitment to a fundamentalist religious movement," then it is the population of such processes, not a population of people, to which you will generalize. Presumably, you would need to identify how many fundamentalist religious movements engage in some form of recruitment in order to know the boundaries of the population. The answer to that question may be that the relevant population is considerably smaller than you first thought. If a researcher is dealing with social units, like organizations, the population may not be as large as is first imagined. (Nachmias, 2002, 91-95) The Debate over Reliability and Validity of Case Study Research Method Quantitative procedures seek to unearth the uniformities of social life and to render such uniformities into precise, numeric forms that easily can lend themselves to formulations, refinements, and testing of hypotheses. Qualitative procedures, which are the type most often used in case study research, seek to understand social action at a greater richness and depth and, hence, seek to record such action through a more complex, nuanced, and subtle set of interpretive categories. Moreover, such interpretations often are constructed by the observer to fit the empirical data at hand, data that are apt to address a new and original set of questions as opposed to the more routine concerns raised by the quantitative analyst. Accordingly, the data collection procedures associated with case studies frequently are said by mainstream quantitative researchers to be more suspect on the issue of reliability than those associated with quantitative procedures. Reliability is usually interpreted as the ability to replicate the original study using the same research instrument and to get the same results. Random-sample surveys of American voting patterns, for instance, have been regularly conducted by the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center for the past thirty-five years. The questions that are used have been carefully refined and tested for their reliability among many thousands of voters over the course of many elections (Campbell et al. 1960, 110-14). Because of the simplicity of the survey questions, and the magic of numbers, many argue that quantitative research is more reliable than qualitative research. But this is not necessarily the case. The analyst of the case study, by comparison, is often engaged in labeling actions and codifying materials that represent empirical data on original issues and questions. Consequently, it is sometimes said that the case study, like all other kinds of qualitative research, is vulnerable to the idiosyncratic biases of the, investigator and can be at best descriptive because it can invoke no more general principles than those supplied by its own data. Therefore, the interpretations and claims of qualitative research are likely to be too unreliable to permit the construction of solid, scientific evidence. Another strategy used by qualitative researchers is to conduct case studies of the same phenomenon over roughly the same time period. This satisfies the need to create inter-subjective and comparative basis for observations and thereby helps insure that observations will be roughly identical from one observer to the next. In the field of urban sociology there are a growing number of case histories of different cities, all covering about the same historical periods. Such works permit comparative researchers to discover what patterns are the same from one city to another, as well as how patterns may differ from place to place. (Babbie, 2000, 119-23) On the matter of the validity of observations, however, the case study provides a clear advantage over other methods of investigation. Although the case study must rely on a good deal of judgment, exercised by the observer, the great strength of this form of research is that it does permit the observer to assemble complementary and overlapping measures of the same phenomena. Thus, a researcher who undertakes a social history of a city usually has at her or his disposal a variety of data sources that can be called on to assess the nature of particular events as well as the motives and interests of actors. There are diaries, correspondence, newspaper reports, and even personal interviews with participants, all of which may be used to cross-check and thereby to validate observations as well as claims based on those observations. This strategy, which Norman Denzin ( 1989, 33-38), among others, discusses, is called the triangulation of sources. By comparison, the sample survey and the census researchers often have fewer sources of data to rely on-typically, questions given as part of either a survey interview or a census questionnaire. In most cases there are no independent sources of validation of survey question responses, particularly on attitudinal questions. One set of attitudinal responses can be checked against another in the same or another survey, but most survey researchers do not check their attitudinal findings against, for example, in-depth interviews with a small sample of respondents. The survey researcher, therefore, must assume that her or his measure of attitudes, gained from a brief survey question, accurately reflects the attitudes of the respondents. The scholar who uses the case study can check such matters, both by asking several different people the same in-depth questions and by checking with alternative and independent sources of information. Of course, most good survey research studies do involve some cross-checking, as when internal checks of question validity are made and when income distributions are checked against census data, but the principle of triangulation is not as well developed. Presentation and Proof Quantitative social science, it is often said, has an advantage over case study research and qualitative methods in the manner in which proof is provided. There exists an array of textbooks that furnish statistical techniques and rules of statistical inference permitting the researcher to declare with confidence--of a statistical sort--that a relationship between variables exists. But the assertion that a statistical presentation is a better method of proof than a qualitative presentation is only a conventional prejudice. There are ways of communicating proof other than the statistical presentation. 'Of course, if one is dealing with qualitative materials, there is an obligation to be as honest and as candid about one's materials as possible and to provide a clear and buttressed presentation of one's findings. But this is true for both qualitative and quantitative researchers. Conclusion The case study occupies a special place in the conduct of social research and that its achievements cannot be matched by the large-scale sample of many cases. The large-scale analysis typically must work with simple indices and measures of its concepts and claims. For example, if one wishes to study work life with a large-scale study, one may deal with a host of interviews that ask workers how they feel about their work, about their employers, and about their jobs. Such information can be fruitfully employed to convey knowledge about such dimensions as alienation on the job, tensions between workers and their employers, and even the impact of work on such matters as family life. But what such information cannot convey is the full scope of work, of daily work life, of how laborers act and are treated on the job. It cannot fathom the manner in which workers do the job, nor can it possibly reveal the way in which employers manage to harness the energies of workers to their own purposes. The case study and the quantitative investigations of a large sample of cases need not be seen as mutually incompatible strategies for research. The two may be fruitfully employed in conjunction with each other. For quantitative analysts, things can be counted; things are related to one another as natural science forces are related, as cause and effect; and the social world may be assumed to operate according to a few underlying social laws. There are important exceptions, of course. Some survey researchers have focused on the values and meanings of phenomena as socially constructed by the unique abilities of human beings, and some have focused on idiosyncratic social systems that are not repeated in the social world. Most, however, have a picture of the world different from that of most qualitative practitioners. Indeed, qualitative methods hold to a generally different set of assumptions about the social world. The qualitative research exemplified in the case study usually brings us closer to real human beings and everyday life. Rather than assuming a world of simplicity and uniformity, those who adopt the qualitative approach generally picture a world of complexity and plurality. It is the richness and subtle nuances of the social world that matter and that the qualitative researcher wishes to uncover. Thus, instead of adopting a set of standardized questions and categories with which to characterize--indeed, one can even say, to construct--social action, the qualitative researcher wishes to permit as much flexibility into the judgments made about the world as possible. Thus, the qualitative investigator typically will tend to undertake different kinds of research. And it is these forms that may, alone or in tandem, be used to constitute a case study of the social world. The best methodologies of qualitative and quantitative research have come from those engaged in active research in which methodology has been subordinated to the ardent desire to know and communicate something significant about human social life. References Babbie Earl R. 2000. The Practice of Social Research. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Company. 119-23 Black James A., and Dean J. Champion. 1976. Methods and Issues in Social Research. New York: John Wiley and Sons. P.92 Blau Peter M. 1955. The Dynamics of Bureaucracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 89-95 Bryman Alan. 1988. Quantity and Quality in Social Research. London: Unwin Hyman. 88-101 Campbell Angus, et al. 1960. The American Voter. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 110-14 Dahl Robert A. 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press. 77-82 Denzin Norman K.1989. The Research Act. 3d ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 33-38 Domhoff G. William. 1978. Who Really Rules? New Haven and Community Power Re-examined. Santa Monica, Calif.: Goodyear. 95-101 Erikson Kai. 1976. Everything in Its Path: A Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster. 115-20 Hunter Floyd. 1953. Community Power Structure. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 59-62 Kanter Rosabeth Moss. 1972. Commitment and Community: Commons and Utopias in Sociological Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 56-60 Lynd Robert S., and Helen Merrell Lynd. 1929. Middletown: A Study in American Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace. 166-69 Nachmias David, and Chava Nachmias. 2002. Research Methods in the Social Sciences. New York: St. Martin's Press. 91-95 Stinchcombe Arthur L. 1998. Theoretical Methods in Social History. New York: Academic Press. 110-16 Tilly Charles. 1999. As Sociology Meets History. New York: Academic Press. 239-44 Yin Robert K. 1984. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Beverly Hills: Sage. 143-51 Sharan B. Merriam (Author) Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education: Revised and Expanded from I Case Study Research in Education/I Jossey-Bass; Rev Sub edition (September 15, 1997) 129-34 Read More