Theme 6: Reflection

Theme 6 discussed the dimensions of both qualitative and case study research. These are my reflections based on the lecture, seminar and reading. Read my previous blog post on this theme here.

First of all, despite the familiarity of the concept of qualitative research, I felt it interestingly refreshing to process probably the most well-known scientific method (at least for me) as the last one in this course. Perhaps because of the order of themes discussed, even qualitative research gained new dimensions in my thinking. As a summary, qualitative methods are a good choice when descriptively explaining a phenomena in detail and in depth. Also, in contrast to quantitative research, qualitative is also more flexible – it actually allows the researcher to revise the study when new findings occur. This is a feature that is shares with design-driven research as well! As for the limitations, qualitative methods often are very time consuming, the possible influence of researchers in the process is higher (both when gathering the data and analyzing it) and the sample can be smaller and less statistically generalizable. It is therefore often benefitting to use mixed methods, of which I was happy to make a concrete observation in the article of my choice. Another thing that I gave more thought after this theme was the expenses – because of its time consuming and complex nature, qualitative research can be extremely expensive. Surely that can have an effect on the choice of a method, at least in some scientific communities.

As for the nature of case study, it is not so much a method but rather an approach which often combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the seminar we described the context of case studies by stating that it is conducted in a specific time and space or even across time and space. How a community copes after an earthquake or how an organization changes as a new management model is brought into use. We discussed that a case study doesn't have a hypothesis, but it does have a research question as a focus that is narrowed down in the process. Sometimes you don't have enough existing theory to formulate a decent research question, and those case studies are called theory building case studies. Another important feature is that data is overlapping with analysis during the entire process, and the process of conducting the study doesn't even have to be a chronological one.

I find it accurate when Ilias described case studies as a "metamethod", a sort of higher level of scientific research, that is not a method you can apply but a method relying on other methods. This definition is similar to the one I wrote in the second paragraph. Case studies also remind me of qualitative research as they too provide in-depth description of a phenomena, and as a matter of fact case study papers don't necessarily even state that they are case studies. This is something we discussed during the seminar as well, that the study presented by Hanna Hasselqvist on the lecture was actually a case study even though not stating it on the paper.

Ilias also mentioned that neurosciences is a good example of using case studies as an approach, because there are many interesting cases concerning the processes of human brain and the affect of brain damages on behavior, for example. But just as much the approach can be applied to any context on a micro or macro level. An interesting thought occurred to me as I started to further analyze the generalizability, which was brought up on the seminar as well. For me it seems that in the context of neuroscience, the aim is to often gain new knowledge of the matter and then try to generalize this to other similar cases and brain research. Understanding the process is still in the very core of it, but the desired outcome in a longer run can be to invent a new medicine, for example. In contrast to this idea of generalizability, we also discussed that the findings often are limited to the specific circumstances. Perhaps it could be identified that the generalizability of a case study also depends on the organism it examines: whether it is an organization, community or the complex human mind. Whatever the case (clever, huh?), a case study describes the cause and effect relationship of a specific phenomena and then provides seeds for further research.