This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.
Abbott, A. (1992). What do cases do? Some notes on activity in sociological analysis. In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry (pp. 53-82). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2.
Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., & Turner, B. S. (1984). Dictionary of sociology. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
3.
Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., & Turner, B. S. (1994). Dictionary of sociology (3rd ed.). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
4.
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
5.
Bacon, F. (1853). Novum organum. In The physical and metaphysical works of Lord Bacon (Book 1). London: H. G. Bohn.
6.
Bailey, M. T. (1992). Do physicists use case studies? Thoughts on public administration research. Public Administration Review, 52(1), 47-54.
7.
Bal, M. (1997). Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative (2nd ed.). Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
8.
Barzelay, M. (1993). The single case study as intellectually ambitious inquiry. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 3(3), 305-318.
9.
Benhabib, S. (1990). Hannah Arendt and the redemptive power of narrative. Social Research, 57(1), 167-196.
10.
Beveridge, W. I. B. (1951). The art of scientific investigation. London: William Heinemann.
11.
Blaug, M. (1980). The methodology of economics: Or how economists explain. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
12.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
13.
Campbell, D. T. (1975). Degrees of freedom and the case study. Comparative Political Studies, 8(1), 178-191.
14.
Campbell, D. T., & Stanley, J. C. (1966). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Chicago: Rand McNally.
15.
Carr, D. (1986). Time, narrative, and history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
16.
Christensen, C. R. (with Hansen, A. J.). (Eds.). (1987). Teaching and the case method. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
17.
Cragg, C. I. (1940). Because wisdom can’t be told. Harvard Alumni Bulletin (Harvard Business School Reprint 451-005), pp. 1-6.
18.
Darwin, C. (1958). The autobiography of Charles Darwin. New York: Norton.
19.
Diamond, J. (1996, November 14). The roots of radicalism. The New York Review of Books, pp. 4-6.
20.
Dogan, M., & Pelassy, D. (1990). How to compare nations: Strategies in comparative politics (2nd ed.). Chatham, UK: Chatham House.
21.
Dreyfus, H., & Dreyfus, S. (with Athanasiou, T.). (1986). Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer. New York: Free Press.
22.
Eckstein, H. (1975). Case study and theory in political science. In F. J. Greenstein & N. W. Polsby (Eds.), Handbook of political science (Vol. 7, pp. 79-137). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
23.
Eysenck, H. J. (1976). Introduction. In H. J. Eysenck (Ed.), Case studies in behaviour therapy (pp. 1-15). London: Routledge.
24.
Fehn, A., Hoestery, I., & Tatar, M. (Eds.). (1992). Neverending stories: Toward a critical narratology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
25.
Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and power: Democracy in practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
26.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2001) Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
27.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage.
28.
Freud, S. (2003). The Wolfman and other cases. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
29.
Gasking, D. A. T., & Jackson, A. C. (1967). Wittgenstein as a teacher. In K. T. Fann (Ed.), Ludwig Wittgenstein: The man and his philosophy (pp. 49-55). Sussex, UK: Harvester Press.
30.
Geertz, C. (1973). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. In The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays (pp. 412-453). New York: Basic Books.
31.
Geertz, C. (1995). After the fact: Two countries, four decades, one anthropologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
32.
Giddens, A. (1982). Profiles and critiques in social theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
33.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
34.
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: Free Press.
35.
Goldthorpe, J., Lockwood, D., Beckhofer, F., & Platt, J. (1968-1969). The affluent worker (Vols. 1-3). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
36.
Griffin, L. J., Botsko, C., Wahl, A.-M., & Isaac, L. W. (1991). Theoretical generality, case particularity: Qualitative comparative analysis of trade union growth and decline. In C. C. Ragin (Ed.), Issues and alternatives in comparative social research (pp. 110-136). Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
37.
Kuhn, T. S. (1987). What are scientific revolutions? In L. Kruger, L. J. Daston, & M. Heidelberger (Eds.), The probabilistic revolution, Vol. 1: Ideas in history (pp. 7-22). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
38.
Kuper, A., & Kuper, J. (Eds.). (1985). The social science encyclopedia. London: Routledge.
39.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1966). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12-44). Seattle, WA: American Ethnological Society.
40.
Lee, A. S. (1989). Case studies as natural experiments. Human Relations, 42(2), 117-137.
41.
MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue: A study in moral theory (2nd ed.). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
42.
Mattingly, C. (1991). Narrative reflections on practical actions: Two learning experiments in reflective storytelling. In D. A. Schön (Ed.), The reflective turn: Case studies in and on educational practice (pp. 235-257). New York: Teachers College Press.
43.
Michels, R. (1962). Political parties: A study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy. New York: Collier Books.
44.
Mitchell, R. G., Jr., & Charmaz, K. (1996). Telling tales, writing stories: Postmodernist visions and realist images in ethnographic writing. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 25(1), 144-166.
45.
Nehamas, A. (1985). Nietzsche: Life as literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
46.
Nietzsche, F. (1969). Ecco homo. New York: Vintage.
47.
Nietzsche, F. (1974). The gay science. New York: Vintage.
48.
Novak, M. (1975). “Story” and experience. In J. B. Wiggins (Ed.), Religion as story (pp. 175-197). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
49.
Peattie, L. (2001). Theorizing planning: Some comments on Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and power. International Planning Studies, 6(3), 257-262.
50.
Platt, J. (1992). “Case study” in American methodological thought. Current Sociology, 40(1), 17-48.
51.
Popper, K. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. New York: Basic Books.
52.
Ragin, C. C. (1987). The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Berkeley: University of California Press.
53.
Ragin, C. C. (1992). “Casing” and the process of social inquiry. In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry (pp. 217-226). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
54.
Ragin, C. C., & Becker, H. S. (Eds.). (1992). What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
55.
Rasmussen, D. (1995). Rethinking subjectivity: Narrative identity and the self. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 21(5-6), 159-172.
56.
Ricoeur, P. (1984). Time and narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
57.
Rorty, R. (1985). Habermas and Lyotard on postmodernity. In R. J. Bernstein (Ed.), Habermas and modernity (pp. 161-175). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
58.
Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 27-48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
59.
Roth, P. A. (1989). How narratives explain. Social Research, 56(2), 449-478.
60.
Rouse, J. (1990). The narrative reconstruction of science. Inquiry, 33(2), 179-196.
61.
Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
62.
Street corner society revisited [Special issue]. (1992). Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 21(1).
63.
Walton, J. (1992). Making the theoretical case. In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry (pp. 121-137). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
64.
White, H. (1990). The content of the form: Narrative discourse and historical representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
65.
Whyte, W. F. (1943) Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
66.
Wieviorka, M. (1992). Case studies: History or sociology? In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social Inquiry (pp. 159-172). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
67.
Wilson, B. (1987). Single-case experimental designs in neuro-psychological rehabilitation. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 9(5), 527-544.
