---
title: "Case study"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_study"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:43:19.359633+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Limitations ==
Designing Social Inquiry (also called "KKV"), an influential 1994 book written by Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba, primarily applies lessons from regression-oriented analysis to qualitative research, arguing that the same logics of causal inference can be used in both types of research. The authors' recommendation is to increase the number of observations (a recommendation that Barbara Geddes also makes in Paradigms and Sand Castles), because few observations make it harder to estimate multiple causal effects, as well as increase the risk that there is measurement error, and that an event in a single case was caused by random error or unobservable factors. KKV sees process-tracing and qualitative research as being "unable to yield strong causal inference" because qualitative scholars would struggle with determining which of many intervening variables truly links the independent variable with a dependent variable. The primary problem is that qualitative research lacks a sufficient number of observations to properly estimate the effects of an independent variable. They write that the number of observations could be increased through various means, but that would simultaneously lead to another problem: that the number of variables would increase and thus reduce degrees of freedom. Christopher H. Achen and Duncan Snidal similarly argue that case studies are not useful for theory construction and theory testing.
The purported "degrees of freedom" problem that KKV identify is widely considered flawed; while quantitative scholars try to aggregate variables to reduce the number of variables and thus increase the degrees of freedom, qualitative scholars intentionally want their variables to have many different attributes and complexity. For example, James Mahoney writes, "the Bayesian nature of process of tracing explains why it is inappropriate to view qualitative research as suffering from a small-N problem and certain standard causal identification problems." By using Bayesian probability, it may be possible to make strong causal inferences from a small sliver of data.
KKV also identify inductive reasoning in qualitative research as a problem, arguing that scholars should not revise hypotheses during or after data has been collected because it allows for ad hoc theoretical adjustments to fit the collected data. However, scholars have pushed back on this claim, noting that inductive reasoning is a legitimate practice (both in qualitative and quantitative research).
A commonly described limit of case studies is that they do not lend themselves to generalizability. Due to the small number of cases, it may be harder to ensure that the chosen cases are representative of the larger population.
As small-N research should not rely on random sampling, scholars must be careful in avoiding selection bias when picking suitable cases. A common criticism of qualitative scholarship is that cases are chosen because they are consistent with the scholar's preconceived notions, resulting in biased research. Alexander George and Andrew Bennett also note that a common problem in case study research is that of reconciling conflicting interpretations of the same data. Another limit of case study research is that it can be hard to estimate the magnitude of causal effects.

== Teaching case studies ==
Teachers may prepare a case study that will then be used in classrooms in the form of a "teaching" case study (also see case method and casebook method). For instance, as early as 1870 at Harvard Law School, Christopher Langdell departed from the traditional lecture-and-notes approach to teaching contract law and began using cases pled before courts as the basis for class discussions. By 1920, this practice had become the dominant pedagogical approach used by law schools in the United States. 

Outside of law, teaching case studies have become popular in many different fields and professions, ranging from business education to science education. The Harvard Business School has been among the most prominent developers and users of teaching case studies. Teachers develop case studies with particular learning objectives in mind. Additional relevant documentation, such as financial statements, time-lines, short biographies, and multimedia supplements (such as video-recordings of interviews) often accompany the case studies. Similarly, teaching case studies have become increasingly popular in science education, covering different biological and physical sciences. The National Center for Case Studies in Teaching Science has made a growing body of teaching case studies available for classroom use, for university as well as secondary school coursework.

== See also ==
Analytic narrative
Casebook method
Case method
Case competition
Case report
Process tracing

== References ==

== Further reading ==
Baskarada, Sasa (October 19, 2014). "Qualitative Case Study Guidelines". The Qualitative Report. 19 (40): 1–25. SSRN 2559424.
Bartlett, L. and Vavrus, F. (2017). Rethinking Case Study Research. Routledge.
Baxter, Pamela; Jack, Susan (2008). "Qualitative Case Study Methodology: Study Design and Implementation for Novice Researchers". The Qualitative Report. 13 (4): 544–59.
Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. (1989). "Building Theories from Case Study Research". The Academy of Management Review. 14 (4): 532–50. doi:10.2307/258557. JSTOR 258557.
George, Alexander L. and Bennett, Andrew. (2005) Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-57222-2
Gerring, John. (2008) Case Study Research. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-67656-4
Kyburz-Graber, Regula (2004). "Does case-study methodology lack rigour? The need for quality criteria for sound case-study research, as illustrated by a recent case in secondary and higher education". Environmental Education Research. 10 (1): 53–65. doi:10.1080/1350462032000173706. S2CID 218499108.
Mills, Albert J.; Durepos, Gabrielle; Wiebe, Elden, eds. (2010). Encyclopedia of Case Study Research. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1-4129-5670-3.
Ragin, Charles C. and Becker, Howard S. Eds. (1992) What is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42188-8
Scholz, Roland W. and Tietje, Olaf. (2002) Embedded Case Study Methods. Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Knowledge. Sage. ISBN 0-7619-1946-5
Straits, Bruce C. and Singleton, Royce A. (2004) Approaches to Social Research, 4th ed. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514794-4.
Thomas, Gary (2011). How to Do Your Case Study: A Guide for Students and Researchers. SAGE Publications.
Yin, Robert K (October 2017). Case study research: design and methods (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, California, US: SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1-5063-3616-9.

== External links ==