Limited-Depth Case Study

Tradeoffs between Depth and Breadth

The in-depth single-case study offers an attractive way to reconcile resource constraints with the need to understand the detailed dynamics of social relations in a specific social context. However, practical constraints mean that even these studies cannot escape from a tradeoff between depth and breadth. They may prioritize deep and intensive investigation of particular actors and/or settings, but an adequate understanding of the immediate, within-case context and the wider, external context of these phenomena may require some breadth of investigation. From this perspective, exemplary forms of in-depth research may incur costs as well as gains in relation to these priorities. Although participant observation can provide unparalleled illumination of social processes in specific settings over time, it may also make it difficult to gain a holistic understanding of the wider configuration of social relations within which these processes are set. Thus, depth of research in this form can also involve some narrowness, rather than being an unalloyed virtue.

Of course, there are important variations in this respect even within the repertoire of participant observation. Thus, some variants (e.g., covert participation) may involve deep but also heavily constrained participation, whereas others (e.g., shadowing) may allow more wide-ranging but shallow observation. The extent to which narrowness comes with depth also depends upon the ways in which participant observation is combined with other methods in the overall research design. Thus, the tradeoffs involved may be quite complex and only rather crudely summarized by counterposing depth and intensity on the one hand and shallow-ness and extensiveness on the other. Key informant interviews, nonparticipant observation, questionnaires, and documentary research may be used in different combinations that offer varied patterns of depth and breadth and may thus address the core requirements of a satisfactory case study in different ways. In particular, they may be combined in ways that provide less depth than participant observation but give access to a wider and more rounded account of the case. Furthermore, one way of thinking about the comparison and analytical reconciliation of findings from such different methods (one aspect of triangulation) is in terms of leveraging deeper insights from a combination of research methods, many of which yield shallow findings in isolation. Therefore, researchers using such multiple methods must find an appropriate tradeoff between depth and breadth in conducting any specific case study.

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