Case Study Research (Education)

The in-depth study of one or more bounded units or systems. A case can be a single person, such as a faculty member, or a group of people, such as a college department. A case could also be a policy, such as a university grade-forgiveness policy, or a program, such as a Women's Studies program. The case study approach is particularly appropriate for answering questions of how and why. Case study research typically relies on multiple sources of data (e.g., interviews, observations, audio or video recordings, documents). Case study researchers often investigate the case(s) over an extended period of time. A case study can focus on a single case study or on multiple cases in a comparative case study. When multiple cases are examined, data are analyzed first within each case and then comparisons are made across cases, where the researcher looks for similarities and differences. Although case study research can be weak for making generalizations, naturalistic generalizations (i.e., generalizations to similar cases or similar situations) are appropriate.