Case Study Research
Essentially, all of the designs in this chapter can be considered case study designs in that each involves an intense study of the phenomenon of interest (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2015). Case study research is useful for an in-depth study of problems to understand processes or situations in context (Martella et al., 2013). A great deal of information can be learned in this way. Case study research does not always involve one participant. It identifies one participant, one setting, one situation, or one event. The term case study, then, comes from the in-depth analysis of a single case such as one school or one school district. For example, say we were to study a particular elementary school due to its unusually high test scores in reading. We could visit the school and assess how the students were taught.
What makes case studies different from other methods is the focus on a single case and an in-depth analysis of that case. Once we have collected and analyzed our data from the elementary school, interpretations of the data will begin. One possible interpretation may be that the students have more reading time, or students are taught in skill groups. The parents may come from a higher socio-economic group than the average family or there is more parental involvement in their children’s schooling. The information gained from case study research can help develop hypotheses and theories for later studies.
Observation Studies
An observation study is a form of a case study. It is helpful to think of observations on a continuum from complete participant to complete observer (Martella et al., 2013).
Complete participant. With complete participation, observers become involved with the participants as if the observers were part of the group. The participants usually do not know they are being observed. For example, if we were interested in seeing what it was like in a teacher-directed classroom, we could enter the classroom and aid the teacher in the instruction. The researcher would spend some time in the school and essentially work as a teacher's aide. Thus, the researcher would get first-hand information on what it was like to be in such a classroom.
Nonparticipant observation study. The difference between participant and nonparticipant studies has to do with the extent to which observers become involved with the participants. It is important to note that the degree to which observers are separated from the participants varies from study to study. In the purest sense, nonparticipant observations would occur in a covert manner. In this way, the observer’s presence is unknown to the participants because of such methods as observing a classroom from behind a mirror. Thus, in the above example, the observer does not interact with the class as an aide, but observes from afar. The advantage of this method of observation is clear--the reactivity associated with observations is all but eliminated. A difficulty is that the ability to interact with the participants and to find out more about them on a personal level is limited. Only those things that are observed are recorded. Other important information that can only be obtained by interacting with the participant is not considered.
Naturalistic observation study. Naturalistic observation studies involve observing participants in their natural settings. There is no attempt to manipulate what goes on in the setting and the observations are unobtrusive (Creswell and Creswell, 2022). The observations are typically nonparticipant, although they can be participant. For example, Jean Piaget interacted with the participants in his studies to a certain extent. He set up situations and observed how children responded to those situations. There was no attempt to “teach” the children how to respond to the situations, but he also did not sit back and observe children without manipulating the environment in some fashion.
Interview Studies
Interviewing is an alternative to and a compatible method of gathering information with observations (Martella et al., 2013). Therefore, if we wanted to determine what it was like in a teacher-directed classroom, we would interview teachers and students to get their perspectives. The advantage of interviewing over observing is that not everything can be observed either because it would be impractical (e.g., following each participant through his or her life) or impossible to do so (e.g., finding out what someone is thinking). However, interviewing is a difficult thing to do well. Interviewers must have the skill of bringing out information from the interviewee in such a way that the interviewer is allowed to understand the interviewee’s world.
Ethnography
Everything discussed up to this point can be combined to form a special type of qualitative research method. Ethnography essentially combines observational methods and in-depth interview methods to investigate a phenomenon from a cultural perspective (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2015). It must be pointed out that ethnography refers to a particular method of gathering data. Ethnography can also refer to a philosophical paradigm. What distinguishes ethnography from the other methods described (e.g., observation and interview studies) is the combination of several data gathering methods as well as the intensity and degree to which the data are gathered. The focus is more holistic in ethnography than in either observation or interview studies and the involvement in the field is long term.
As with much of the qualitative research previously described, ethnographic researchers enter into the field or research situation without any preconceived notion of what they will find. There are usually no specific or precise hypotheses as there are when conducting quantitative research. The conclusions drawn from the research develop over time as the researcher becomes a part of the culture.
For example, suppose that a researcher was interested in studying the question, “What is the school environment when a school-wide reading curriculum adoption takes place?" The researcher would make arrangements to visit the school to get a “feel” for the place. She would begin to talk to the students and staff. She would possibly take over some teaching duties to understand the school from a teacher’s perspective. She would interact with other teachers and administrators and take field notes. She would conduct formal and informal interviews, with the questions becoming more specific the longer she stays in the school. The researcher continues the study for an entire school year or longer. It would not be enough to conduct the investigation for a day, a week, or a month. The data that are desirable cannot be obtained in a short time period.
Document Analysis
Although document analysis may not be a research design per se, it is a method of obtaining information and making conclusions about a phenomenon. Document analysis involves obtaining data from any number of written or visual sources such as diaries, novels, incident reports, pictures, advertisements, speeches, official documents, files, films, audiotapes, books, newspapers, and so on. Document analysis is especially important to historians investigating trends in the past when there may not be anyone alive to provide information or the information that exists is too limiting. Document analysis is also used in situations where researchers want to obtain information unobtrusively or when the information cannot be obtained in a more efficient or valid manner such as an observation.
For example, it may be interesting to investigate the predominant method of teaching reading in the U.S. during the 1960s. If we wished to do this, we could look at magazines, newspapers, and textbooks to get a handle on the approach used during that time.
Triangulation Methods
One critical aspect of qualitative research is triangulation methods. Triangulation means that data are gathered from multiple data sources (e.g., teachers, students, observers, interviewers), with multiple methods (qualitative, quantitative), and by multiple analysts (two or more interviewers or observers).