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Key terms
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It is difficult to provide a single definition of a case or case study because case study research is used in many fields of knowledge and there is no agreed-upon authorita- tive text. After reviewing a number of well-known texts, I chose John Gerring’s (2007) Case Study Methods: Principles and Practices because it is clear, comprehen- sive and cross-disciplinary. 1 The next two paragraphs cite from it.
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1A second edition was published in February 2017, which is a substantial re-write of the first. I draw mainly, but not exclusively, from the first edition in this chapter. Gerring is a political scientist and takes a positivist approach to case study research.
A case is a ‘spatially and temporally delimited phenomenon’ that is ‘observed at a single point in time or over some period of time’ (2007: 211). In the social sciences, it can be a social or political unit (an individual, family, gang, organization, commu- nity, city, state, nation-state); other type of social group (based on age, sex/gender, racial-ethnic, religion, social status, profession); particular type of organization or institution (the police, a court, truth commission, regulatory body); or event (nuclear disaster, terrorist attack, mass shooting, riot, crime). There are myriad potential cases. The only restriction is that a case ‘has identifiable boundaries and [is] the pri- mary object of an inference’ (p. 19). In other words, a case is bounded in time and space, and it comprises the phenomenon you want to describe and explain.
A case study is ‘an intensive study of a single case … to shed light on a larger class of cases (a population)’ (p. 20). Case study research has one or several cases. However, as the number of cases increases, it is not possible to study each intensively. ‘At the point where the emphasis of a study shifts from the individual case to a sam- ple of cases … a study is cross-case’ (p. 20). It is not possible to pinpoint precisely when this shift from case study to cross-case research occurs; rather, it is ‘a matter of degree … the fewer cases there are, and the more intensively they are studied’, the more we call it case study research (p. 20). Clarifying further, Gerring suggests that case study research is ‘usually limited to a dozen cases or fewer … unless the study is extraordinarily long’ (p. 22). In the second edition (2017), he considers a medium number of cases (that is, 20 to 30).
Two other terms clarify the relationship of case study research to cross-case research: an observation and a variable. A variable is ‘an attribute of an observation or set of observations’, which does not ‘presume statistical analysis’ (Gerring, 2007: 217). I illustrate these two terms by way of an example in Box 21. 1.
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(Continued)
at your institution to learn more about how it defines and addresses student plagiarism.
Oxford University defines plagiarism this way:
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Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or with- out their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or elec- tronic form, is covered under this definition. Plagiarism may be intentional or reckless, or unintentional …
Forms of plagiarism [are] verbatim (word for word quotation without clear acknowledgement), cutting and pasting from the Internet without clear acknowl- edgement, paraphrasing [without acknowledgement of the source], collusion, inaccurate citation, failure to acknowledge assistance, use of material written by professional agencies or other persons, and auto-plagiarism [for example, using your work submitted for one course in another course].
Source: www. ox. ac. uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism (accessed 14 August 2017)
Student plagIarIsm In unIversIty assIgnments
For our case study on plagiarism, we select three students and gather in-depth evi- dence on their experiences and decisions to plagiarize (or not). This would result in many observations over time of each student on variables of interest. We would produce a detailed understanding of each student’s experiences and decisions, in their own words, noting variation among them (within-case variation).
For our cross-case study of plagiarism, we survey a sample of 250 students. We have observations of 250 students and create many variables from the survey ques- tions. We produce an analysis of variation among the students, estimating the prevalence of attempted plagiarism with reference to how much time students have been in university, their age and sex/gender, and other variables (cross-case variation). The difference between case study and cross-case research is the number of cases selected, which is based on the degree to which a case can be studied inten- sively. Each approach has ‘the same [objective] – the explanation of a population of cases – but [each] goes about this task differently’ (Gerring, 2007: 21). The two
methods can complement one another.
Case study research is often represented as qualitative research, but this is not accurate. Case study research is better understood in the following way: it may use qualitative or quantitative methods (or both) in gathering and analysing evidence.
By comparison, cross-case research is quantitative because a large number of cases require statistical analysis. The difference between case study research and cross-case research is not the type of evidence that is used (which may include statistical surveys, interviews, archival records and the like), but rather that the focus of analysis is on a single case or several cases, with the aim of ‘illuminat[ing] features of a broader set of cases’ (Gerring, 2007: 29).
Let’s return to our case study of plagiarism illustrated in Box 21. 1. We may carry out a statistical analysis of the academic records of the three students, or we may conduct a university-wide analysis of the types of courses where plagiarism allega- tions are more likely to be made. This evidence would be part of our analysis of each student, along with intensive interviews and observations of them. In this way, our analysis would be supplemented with other material that gives a broader context to the three students’ experiences. Alternatively, we could carry out a cross-case study of 250 students first, and from that analysis, select three cases for intensive analysis that illustrate which students are likely to plagiarize and why this occurs. This is an example of combining cross-case and case study methods.
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Along with other case study analysts (George and Bennett, 2005; Platt, 1992; Ragin, 1987/2014; Yin, 1984/1994/2014) and those in criminology (Karstedt, 2001, 2012), Gerring (2007: 12) argues that viewing case study and cross-case research as ‘being in opposition with each other’ is wrong. ‘Researchers may do both and, argu- ably, must engage both styles of evidence’. Case study research may need to rely on findings from cross-case research to guide the selection of cases for intensive analysis. Because case study researchers are obliged to answer Becker’s question, ‘what is this a case of? ’, they need to have in mind a broader set of cases. Likewise, cross-case researchers may be able to predict outcomes or variation in outcomes, but not be able to explain how or why these outcomes came about. To do so, they need to supple- ment their analysis with case studies. Thus, the primary comparison should be between case study and cross-case research. The types of evidence used – whether qualitative, quantitative, or both – are secondary.
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