Doing case studies

A case study is an in-depth investigation of a single case or instance in a real context -- a single person, patient, group, event, community, program, policy, agency, organization, business, or other entity. It allows for detailed exploration of complex events or phenomena. The data involved are often gathered from observations, interviews, or other methods.

1 Rationale

Because it focuses on a single entity or subject, it is often done as an exploratory study, e.g., to identify a possible explanation or analysis, which can be studied further with other research methods. It is also used for more practical purposes, such as situations where a full academic analysis is not needed or practical, such as case studies of business and companies, for practical understanding of reasons for a company's success or failure. It can also be used to evaluate a program (e.g., an educational program, a government program or policy) based on established criteria for evaluation (such as an often-used model for evaluating programs) to assess the effectiveness of a program.

A case study can be an effective tool for creating business reports and for conducting business analysis. This can be valuable for students in a business program learning how to analyze companies. This is also valid for more senior workers in a company who are tasked with analyzing their company, its challenges, problems, or potential future directions. In fact, business analysis is an important field in business, and an important tool for companies' growth and success.

2 Steps

For conducting a case study, such as for my IW or Intermediate Writing course, the following steps are useful.

1. Identify a well-defined case
2. Formulate a specific research question
3. Determine the research methods
4. Collect empirical materials
5. Describe the case
6. Analyze and interpret data
7. Evaluate solutions, outcomes, or recommendations

2.1 Identifying a well-defined case

This may involve doing background reading on a subject area to help identify a good, specific case. The case should be specific enough that it can be managed well in a single in-depth paper or report. Otherwise, the paper topic will become unmnanageable, and your paper will lack depth and coherence. The case should also be well defined, so that your research can be truly informative and novel for an intelligent reader, rather than simply rehashing familiar information or ideas.

Depending on the type of case study you are doing, you will want to find some sources to inform your research and to provide some informative background information on the topic. This will also help to identify a specific case for your study. Some possible sources include:

1. Research articles from academic research journals
2. Articles from trade magazines / journals. These are not popular periodicals, but publications for professionals in a particular industry or occupation. Examples would include professional magazines for those working in the film industry, food industry, IT / technology, psychology, higher education, language education, health care, aviation, or any other relevant profession.
3. Business and business news periodicals, especially those that also carry good articles on analyzing particular issues and companies.
4. Professional business magazines like 'Harvard Business Review'
5. Publications for science news, health news, and such
6. High-quality news sources, including those with good analytical articles by experts

2.1.1 Searching for sources

Good sources can help with identifying a suitable case, and for the other steps in the process, as well as for writing up the paper or report. Besides Google, you can use an academic search engine, namely, Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com), or a regional academic search engine, such as RISS (www.riss.kr) to search for academic research within Korea. For RISS, one has to be careful about some search results, such as a master's thesis (which lacks the credibility of other research sources), conference papers (which may be preliminary research, or research that has not been well peer-reviewed), or doctoral dissertations (which may be too heavy for a typical non-academic or non-expert to read well).

For Google or Google Scholar, it can be helpful to know good search syntax to find sources more easily.

Search syntax	Function	Example	Explanation
OR	Search for two terms at once	classified OR secret documents nuclear	Search for the phrase 'classified documents' or 'secret documents plus 'nuclear'
"quotation marks"	Search for a phrase (not for the individual words)	"classified documents" nuclear	Search for hits about 'classified documents' and 'nuclear'.
- (minus)	Exclude a search term from the results -- omit hits with a particular word	"classified documents" -Trump nuclear	Search for 'classified documents' and 'nuclear' but omit hits about Trump mishandling such documents.
site:	Search for results on a particular website	"quantum computing" research "site:ibm.com"	Search the IBM website for pages or documents on their quantum computing.
site:	Search for results on a domain	"classified documents" nuclear site:us.gov --- "classified documents" nuclear site:navy.mil	Search for classified documents and nuclear on US government or US Navy websites.

3 See also

1. Case studies