Methodology or method? A critical review of qualitative case study reports
By Nerida Hyett, A. Kenny, Virginia Dickson-Swift. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health & Well-Being, 2014
603 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Despite on-going debate about credibility, and reported limitations in comparison to other approaches, case study is an increasingly popular approach among qualitative researchers. We critically analysed the methodological descriptions of published case studies. Three high-impact qualitative methods journals were searched to locate case studies published in the past 5 years; 34 were selected for analysis. Articles were categorized as health and health services (n=12), social sciences and anthropology (n=7), or methods (n=15) case studies. The articles were reviewed using an adapted version of established criteria to determine whether adequate methodological justification was present, and if study aims, methods, and reported findings were consistent with a qualitative case study approach. Findings were grouped into five themes outlining key methodological issues: case study methodology or method, case of something particular and case selection, contextually bound case study, researcher and case interactions and triangulation, and study design inconsistent with methodology reported. Improved reporting of case studies by qualitative researchers will advance the methodology for the benefit of researchers and practitioners.
Subfields: Education, Management Science and Operations Research, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32da445bc16ba3b585568fc44ffd5253c113ef9b
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Citations in the corpus
- Theme development in qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis (2016, methodology): “However, without a clear understanding and unified application of the principles of data analysis, such flexibility may limit their international application across different disciplines and lead the reader to misinterpret or discredit study findings.[77] Therefore, this paper presented an analytica”
- Teachers’ Critical Reflective Practice in the Context of Twenty-first Century Learning (2015, background): “Hyett, Kenny, and Dickson-Swift (2014), reflecting on Stake (1995, cited in Hyett et al., 2014), note that a ‘collective refers to an instrumental case which is studied as multiple, nested cases, observed in unison, parallel, or sequential order’ (p. 2), where an ‘instrumental’ case is one which…”