Five Misunderstandings About Case Study

FIVE MISUNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT CASE-STUDY RESEARCH

Bent Flyvbjerg Aalborg University, Denmark

This article was written by Bent Flyvbjerg and examines five common misinterpretations about case-study research: “It also explains and corrects these misconceptions and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies” (Flyvbjerg, 2006).

1. The first misunderstanding about case-study says theoretical (context-independent) knowledge is more valuable than practical

The fourth misconception about case-study says; it contains a slant toward verification, that is, a tendency to confirm the researcher’s preconceived notions. But, “the question of subjectivism and bias toward verification applies to all methods, not just to the case study and other qualitative methods. In addition to that, researchers who have conducted intensive, in-depth case studies typically report that their preconceived views, assumptions, concepts, and hypotheses were wrong and that the case material has compelled them to revise their hypotheses on essential points. Therefore, the case study contains no greater bias toward verification of the researcher’s preconceived notions than other methods of inquiry. On the contrary, experience indicates that the case study contains a greater bias toward falsification of preconceived notions than toward verification” (Flyvbjerg,

In addition to that “good social science is problem driven and not methodology driven in the sense that it employs those methods that for a given problematic, best help answer the research questions at hand. More often than not, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods will do the tasks best ((Flyvbjerg,