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When is it Appropriate to Employ a Case Study Design?
When is it Appropriate to Employ a Case Study Design?
If we knew what it is was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? - Albert Einstein
When is it Appropriate to Employ a Case Study Design?
When the researcher seeks to answer the exploratory "How", "What", and "Why" questions
When there is limited information in the literature surrounding the topic, and an investigative/exploratory approach is required
Ex. How does the implementation of a novel documentation system impact nursing workflow and productivity?
When the researcher seeks to explore events or phenomena in the natural context in which they occur
Considerations
What is the research question and how might the researcher approach answering this question?
Is the use of an experimental design appropriate or even possible?
Is the goal to obtain a more naturalistic understanding of the research question?
What type of case study best suits the research question? (instrumental, intrinsic, or collective)
Approaching a Case Study
Approaching a Case Study
Case studies may be approached in different ways depending on the epistemological standpoint of the researcher, that is, whether they take a critical (questioning one's own and others' assumptions), interpretivist (trying to understand individual and shared social meanings) or positivist approach (orientating towards the criteria of natural sciences, such as focusing on generalizability considerations)
Example of Epistemological Approaches That May Be Used in Case Study Research:
Example of Epistemological Approaches That May Be Used in Case Study Research:
Critical
Involves questioning one's own assumptions taking into account the wider political and social environment. Interprets the limiting conditions in relation to power and control that are thought to influence behaviour.
Interpretative
Involves understanding meanings/contexts and processes as perceived from different perspectives, trying to understand individual and shared social meanings. Focus is on theory building.
Positivist
Involves establishing which variables one wishes to study in advance and seeing whether they fit in with the findings. Focus is often on testing and refining theory on the basis of case study findings.
Let's break down this concept using the exemplar study by Ali et al. (2021) titled "Impact of Coronavirus-19 on Mental Health: A Case Study of University Students"
The research question/aim of this particular study is to identify key stressors related to COVID-19 and their impact on the mental well-being of university students
Let's apply this research question to the points above...
This study seeks to answer the exploratory "How" (How do identified stressors related to COVID-19 impact the mental well-being of university students?); "What" (What is the impact of these identified stressors on the mental well-being of university students?); and "Why" (Why are these findings significant to continuing research in this field?)
The researchers in this study utilize questionnaires to gather descriptive data to analyze events or phenomena (COVID-19 related stressors and their impact on the mental well-being of university students) in the context in which they occur (the COVID-19 pandemic) - the goal is to obtain a naturalistic understanding of the research question
The type of case study that best suits this question is an instrumental case study, the research questions surrounds one issue (COVID-19 and mental well-being of university students) and uses a single case to illustrate that issue (questionnaire administered to sample population from the same university)
Is the use of an experimental design appropriate/possible? - An experimental design would be ethically inappropriate in this study as the researchers seek to analyze mental well-being in the context of perceived stress, anxiety and depression. In this context, it would be ethically unjust for the researchers to control for these factors in an experimental design
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